Descendant Habits: A Decadent Habits Elseworlds
by Darkenning
Summary: An alternate history of Decadent Habits, which won't make any sense at all if you haven't read the original. All warnings apply.
1. Chapter 1

_Standard issue disclaimer: Negima was created by Akamatsu Ken and its ownership is somewhat disputed. I am not him, or any of them. This is parody, protected speech.  
_  
**Descendant Habits  
****Chapter One**

"It's a boy," the nurse told Nekane.

To her eyes, filled with tears, he looked much like his father had, all those years ago. "Nigel," she said. "His name is Nigel." That was what she'd wanted to name her first born. There'd been a book she'd loved growing up, where the young hero who went out into the world was named Nigel. Right now, she couldn't remember much about it, because of the pain and because of what was mostly keeping it at bay. But she remembered that.

And the tears resumed as the nurse took him away from her, so that she could get some rest, even though all that she wanted was to hold him in her arms and never let him go, as she'd had no choice but to let go of Negi. But her arms were too weak, and so she eventually subsided and let sleep take her as her second child was carried to rest in the nursery with all his brothers and sisters.

* * *

_Roughly eleven years earlier, this happened._

"She didn't eat any of it," the chief of guards reported to the facility's warden, to give them greater dignity than either of them deserved.

"She will eventually," replied the warden, not bothering to look up from her fashion magazine as she sat at her desk, receiving the chief. "Our guest is not some fanatic whom we're going to have to force feed, and she's not suicidal, either. Once she accepts that no rescue is coming, she'll also accept that she needs to survive this in order to take revenge when we slip up and allow her an opening to escape. And she'll eat, and become much more manageable. That will be all."

A few seconds later, on realizing that her primary lackey was not stepping away from the desk as expected, the gangleader looked up with an annoyed expression. "Or is there something else?" she asked, taking a look at his troubled expression. "Don't tell me you're having moral qualms."

"No, of course not. Practical ones. Is this stuff that we're putting in her food actually going to work? I don't know much about the Royal Magic, but isn't it supposed to work against poisons and such?"

One of the secrets to effective leadership is learning not to discourage your subordinates from exercising their intelligence on your behalf. The warden's adherence to this particular doctrine was spotty at best, but at this particular juncture, she elected to nod. "Yes. It counters poisons and even medicinal drugs unless it recognizes them as genuinely helpful to the body's pattern. But the substance we're putting in her food will be recognized like that."

"How -"

"Deviluke technology," she said. This was actually code for 'I don't know.' In the circles in which these people moved, any advanced technology was always be assumed to be manufactured by the sorcerer-engineers of the Deviluke Empire. She neither knew nor truly cared how the chemical additives in question functioned, nor where they came from, but only that they would function in accordance with her needs. Or she would have words with her supplier, and possibly other people further up the line of supply. Words that might be the last thing such people ever heard. "Anything else?" she asked, in a way that strongly implied that the answer should be no.

The information given satisfied the chief of guards, who shook his head in response and left the room at a brisk walk, heading out of the well-lit office into one of the prison's shadowy hallways. He was so focused on his task that he didn't notice that one of the shadows was moving behind him until it was on top of him, in a section of the hallway which fortuitously afforded a blind spot in the near-ubiquitous surveillance. And then it was too late.

The shadow's name, at least the one most commonly used, was Kamiya, and he was presently male. After satisfying himself that the man would live but remain unconscious for enough time to complete the operation, Kamiya shoved him into the cloak he had inherited from his mother, before assuming the man's form and resuming his walk. After the conversation he'd just had with his superior, it would be perfectly understandable if he went to check on the prisoner again, and so Kamiya did so as well.

He arrived at the cell at the center of this prison complex, designed to hold a single person, made the appropriate adjustments to the cell's controls - tightening restraining devices remotely - and slid open the top slit in the door. The woman within the cell, naked save for her long blonde hairs, stared cool murder at him from heterochromatic eyes. Kamiya found himself impressed despite everything. He honestly wished that he could free her ahead of schedule. But that was not to be, and his wishes mattered much less than the fulfillment of his duty.

He closed the slit and proceeded to his actual target - the prison's supplies. As it was intended to be self-sustaining, the facility had been equipped with all the supplies that it would need for roughly twenty years of continuous operation, using techniques similar to those employed by continuance-of-government facilities. This included its supply of a certain chemical.

Ironically, the doctrines that allowed it to be self-sufficient also left it open to sabotage. If any of the supplies were tampered with, they could not easily be replaced. And if that tampering was very subtle ... then it would never be discovered. By adulterating their supplies of the chemical, in a way that would be undetectable for a group of operatives unfamiliar with the biotechnology involved, Kamiya could radically change the outcome of the imprisonment of the Queen of Calamity.

And yet he hesitated to do so.

This was not a case of defending his own right to exist. In both the history in which he (or someone else) did this and the history in which he did not, he came into existence. What changed as a consequence was certain facts in the lives of his allies. And so he hesitated as he had not before seducing his own parents. Ensuring one's own existence was selfish, true, but far less than ensuring that one's allies were of a certain quality and nature, when it truly mattered not at all as long as they were allied.

As was so often the case, his hesitation resulted in the decision being made for him. Alarms abruptly began to blare, announcing that there was an intruder in the base. He did not permit himself to freeze, since he was certain that he could not be the intruder detected. But whoever it was had compromised the operation. Releasing the man he was impersonating from his cloak, he shifted away from this time and place with his mission unfulfilled.

The chemical that would have sterilized the Queen of Calamity would now only slow her cycles to a crawl, with no lasting effects once it was out of her system. In time, she would know childbirth again.

With all the potential wonder and horror that entailed.  
_  
A stone cast before an avalanche. Yet one that turns its course, though that will not be apparent for many years to come._

* * *

"My son, from what I am told, you are familiar with the uses of these?" she said, holding up a bottle of age-changing pills.

"Oh, yes, I've used these quite a few times."

"Very well." She handed him the bottle. "I would then ask you to take one and assume the semblance of a fifteen year old."

"Well, all right," Negi said, and obeyed his mother at once. Fortunately, the age increase pills also caused ones clothes to expand with one.

"Thank you. The purpose of this exercise, then, is to permit me to, as your sister might put it, establish some freaking ephebophilia." She took Negi's somewhat larger face between her hands. "Negi, I love you regardless of how you look ... but I admit that I will feel more comfortable as your lover when you are as old as you look now. For at this size, I need neither bend so far nor kneel to do this." She kissed him passionately and forcefully.

To Negi, it felt strange. The tangible illusion in which he was surrounded conveyed the sensation of being touched, but there was a minute but perceptible delay between the stimulus and his awareness of it. The sensation of his mother's lips on his own was different from the way that it felt when he was in his natural form. It wasn't bad, just ... different.

So too was the sensation he felt as she reached with one hand to stroke him there. She pulled back, and there was a smile on her face. "Ah. You have grown." With one hand, she undid the button of his pants - he'd stopped wearing his belt recently - slid down the zipper, and reached in. He groaned softly as she took him in hand.

"This exercise will involve only fellatio and intercourse," Arika explained. "While in this state you have the size to better develop technique with paizuri, I have, I think, explained to you that paizuri is - what?" Her eyes stared deeply into his own.

Oh, a test. "Primarially a way for a woman to satisfy a man, rather than anything she will voluntarily enjoy," he repeated from memory. "In some cases, it might even be used simply as a way for a man to assert dominance over a woman. But, ma'am, don't women generally enjoy cunnilingus?"

"Yes, that is quite true, and it's praiseworthy that you remember that," she said as she slid his suspenders off his shoulders and let his pants fall. "But we are engaging in absolute minimal foreplay on this occasion. I am or will be sufficiently lubricated by the time arrives for you to penetrate my cunt." He noted again, as she dropped down to one knee in front of him, the odd dichotomy of her normally precise words and the blunt words she used for the genitalia. But she had taken him into her mouth, and it was hard to think about such matters.

He grew harder as her lips, teeth and tongue moved up and down him. She was beyond any doubt the most skilled fellatrix of his admittedly limited experience, Negi decided as he ran his fingers through her hair. After only a few moments, he was as hard as ever; harder, actually, if the sensations of the disguise were to be trusted. Arika pulled back and rose to her feet, one hand wrapping around his hardness as she started pushing him towards the bunkbeds. "Lift my skirt, please," she said.

Unsteadily, as he backed up, he reached down slowly hiked up the skirt that stretched down to her ankles until its hemline was up around her hips. This revealed that she was wearing garters and stockings, but no panties. That done, she paused, then slowly turned them both around so that she was backing towards the bunkbeds and - gently, ever gently - pulling him with them. She pulled him - still gently - with her as she sat down on the bottom bunk. Their distance between their hips closed, and she firmly guided his hardness -

"Are you thinking of this as a hardness?" she asked abruptly.

"Um," he answered, not wanting to lie.

"What is this?" she asked, squeezing slightly.

"That is ... my cock," he answered.

"And this?" she asked, spreading her lower lips.

"That ... is the cunt I came out of," Negi answered.

"Almost correct. It is the cunt you will soon cum into again," Arika answered. And then she pushed, and pulled, and guided, and his cock was in her cunt.

"Do it now. Do it hard. Do it long," she told him.

And he did, pumping back and forth, hands on her sides as he pushed up and into her, as her legs came up and crossed behind his rear to pull him in further. He managed a respectable ten minutes before his breathing changed, telling her that he was fighting off orgasm.

"Do not fight it. Give in to it, give it into me, give me my grandchildren -" his mother told him, working him like a pump with her muscles below.

"Wait, what? gasped Negi.

"Give me your children -" Pump.

"But, but I'm not sure that I'm ready to be a father at my age!" Negi protested.

"Nor was I happy about becoming a mother at your age, but we don't -" Pump. "- always get -" Pump. "- what we want!" Pump, pump, pump. "Now cum!"

And he did, and though she had not achieved climax, it was no matter. The pleasure was intellectual, now, as she reached down with her extrasenses to feel the sperm fertilizing her ovae.

There it was! Ah, how beautiful. She smiled broadly at the sensation, at the joy of taking her son and all that was him back into her, and ...  
_  
Wait,_ she thought, as her senses gave her a view of the genetic pattern which was even now combining with her own. _If this is my son, why is there so little of me in him?_ She withdrew her awareness from her womb, and tightened her embrace of Negi's teenaged body. Arika had heard of a condition called 'chimerism' which caused different patterns of life to express themselves in different parts of the body, and so she carefully examined the body of the teenager who still crouched between her legs, panting heavily. As she did so, her smile became somewhat fixed.

"Mother?" Negi asked hesitantly, picking up on her abrupt change of mood. "Is something the matter?"

"I'm not sure," Arika lied as she got the answer she feared, and found herself considering how best to kill this creature who had just inseminated her under the guise of being her child. Until this very moment, she had never quite comprehended the anger and fear most men felt at the prospect of being cuckolded. Now she understood in full what it was to cherish someone and realize that they had come from someone else. It filled her with a towering fury.

"Please, tell me what's wrong," he pleaded, pulling away slightly. "Did I do something to -"

As quickly as it had arisen, her fury ebbed. "No, no, it's fine," she assured him, pulling him close. "I just expected to be happier about all this than I am." Another lie, but one of kindness. His obvious concern forced her to realize that whatever trickery had been worked upon her had been worked on him as well.  
And even beyond that, he was definitely, beyond any doubt, Nagi's son, the child of the one she loved most in all of time and space. In fact ... yes, he was Nagi's child twice over; now that she was calm, she recognized those patterns as well.  
_  
Nekane's child,_ she concluded in silence. _Why is Nekane's child posing as mine?_  
_  
Where is mine?_

Questions for another day. Right now, she bent down to soundly kiss the face of the child who was now the father of her next child.

* * *

Arika's sleep the next night was somewhat troubled, though no one who didn't know her well would have realized it. Fortunately, Konoka had still not returned from wherever she'd gone when she'd departed this morning, so Arika had the lower bunk all to herself. While her meditations were somewhat distracted by the sounds of Asuna and Negi above her, with the way that the amusement she'd felt at the thought of her children's union had ended thanks to the discovery that only one of them was in fact her child, she was able to ignore it.  
_  
Still, it's not as though I could make them stop, if I wanted to do that,_ she decided. _Asuna truly loves him for himself, despite the fact that she now believes he is her brother. I refuse to destroy her happiness, simply because my own has been tainted somewhat._

But

why _did Nekane raise her son to believe that he was simply her cousin? And why did her friends and family cooperate with this grand deception?_

And

where is **my** son?

A terrible anger was growing in her heart. Whatever had become of the son she'd carried for nine months beneath her heart, his birthright, his very identity, had been stolen and given to another. She had never begrudged Nekane's crush on Nagi, had found it amusing when Nagi himself was discomfitted by it and confessed his cuckolding of his brother to her. How could she, who loved her own father desperately and without requital, possibly despise another for the same feelings? But this was taking matters too far. Much too far.

But the best and most poetically just revenge would be to take it that much further. Arika began thinking of ways to do that.

Once the sounds from above subsided enough to make her believe that the children had descended into sleep, for the moment, she arose from the bunk and padded barefoot over to the nook where Albert Chamomile had, until very recently, slept. He had been in such a hurry to depart - itself rather suspicious - that he'd left certain of his belongings behind. Such as his small computer.

His password ('iluvpanties') was childishly easy to figure out, and he'd foolishly permitted the shopping sites he employed record his credit card information. She found that the items she wished to purchase were readily available, and, even in the quantities she required, could be shipped to her and arrive by morning. The hypocrisy of being angry that her son's identity had been stolen, and responding by stealing another's identity, did not trouble her in the slightest. Royalty makes its own rules.

Anger momentarily satisfied, she returned to bed, and went to sleep dreaming of someone else's grandchildren, rather than her own. And the revenge she would take with them.

* * *

"A strategy session?" Negi asked the next day when she proposed the idea over breakfast

Arika nodded. "Didn't you say yesterday that you wanted to see Asuna surrounded by people with real world experience, so long as this Tsukuyomi person is wandering about? Let us gather our forces, then, and make plans."

He frowned as he considered it. "You're right, of course," he said at last. "But at the same time -" Negi paused as he looked around the dorm room.

"It will be kind of tricky squeezing everyone in here," Asuna supplied at last.

"We need not do so," Arika replied easily. "For now, let us just involve those whom you consider the most capable. Tatsumiya-san, for example. And perhaps that ninja who was present the other day, who retrieved -"

"We're back," announced Konoka, accompanied by Setsuna. They both looked tired, and Setsuna in particular had a rather haunted expression on her face. It reminded Arika of how Eishun had looked after learning of a mistake that he'd made unwittingly. But they were holding hands tightly, which argued that steps were being taken.

"Ah, splendid," Arika said. "Join us, please." She poured them both juice, adulterated with the fertility drugs she'd purchased, and watched them drink it wth pleasure. Her plans were proceeding nicely.

* * *

"Yes, this one's on the house," Mana agreed. "The bounty on Tsukuyomi is enough that I can probably forego any other fees and still break even. Of course, donations to my favorite charities are always welcome." She glanced at her rival with readily apparent annoyance. "But what's she doing here?"

"This one is endeavoring to provide our esteemed hosts with a more secure meeting place and shelter," Kaede answered in much the same tone. "Further, this one does so for the joy of assisting one's friends, rather than any extortionate fees."

"What was that about extortion?" Mana growled.

"No fighting, please," Negi groaned as the two of them began to square off.

Smiling faintly at the sexual tension between the two young women, Arika nonetheless found herself uneasy about Nagase's motivation. Friendship was admirable, but fragile, as well. The bonds of love were better and more binding. She believed that Nagase did love her s- Negi. (She was finding it hard to stop thinking of the boy as her son. How frustrating.) But did she love him enough, or would that friendship be shattered by -

"I told her, you know," Konoka said quietly.

Arika blinked. She had of course been aware that Konoka was standing beside her, and it was for that reason that she had not yet added the fertility drugs to the tea she was planning on sending into the cloak with them. But she hadn't realized that the young woman was perceptive enough to realize what she was thinking, or at least the subject of those thoughts. "Did you indeed?"

"The other day, when I messed up and went out looking for her. She's not bothered by it. I'm not sure why."

"How intriguing. Thank you." She paused, then pressed on. "I'm glad that you and Setsuna-san have grown closer again. I did not wish to be the source of more pain to you than I had to be." That was probably as close to an expression of regret as she could come.

Konoka smiled sweetly and went over to stand with Setsuna, who was trying, without success, to get a straight answer from Mana about why their dorm room had been so bloodied yesterday. This finally permitted Arika to add the drugs to their tea. Enough for four women. She paused, and then doubled the dose, just to be well past safe. She hoped that neither the half-demon nor the ninja would detect the adulterant ...

They all went into the cape and began their meeting well. Arika decided to absent herself momentarily to give their natural instincts a chance to flourish without adult supervision. She was fairly certain what she would find when she went back in, so she stripped off her clothes while waiting. The surprise of a knock at the door momentarily froze her, and so she quickly pulled on a housecoat before answering.

"Takahata," she said, with chill politeness, when she saw who was at the door. "What seems to be the matter?"

"I need to speak to Negi. It's very urgent," the teacher explained.

She lifted an eyebrow and held open the door allowing him to brush past her as he entered the room. He found it deserted, with a cloak lying on the kotatsu. "Where are -"

"That's Kaede-san's artifact, Tengu no Kakuremino," Arika explained as she shut the door and followed him in. "Negi and some of his partners are having a strategy session with Mana-san in the cloak's cottage."

"A strategy session?" Takamichi asked.

"A strategy session," Arika confirmed, smiling inwardly.

"Well, regardless, I need to talk to him, and it is very -"

"Urgent, you said. Forgive me, but I think I'll be the judge of what's urgent where Negi is concerned," Arika said, sitting down on the bottom bunk and crossing her legs. "What's the matter, Takahata?"

He drew in a deep breath. "I've been fired from my position at Mahora due to the discovery of a certain indiscretion I committed a little while ago," he began.

"You mean how you had sex with Konoka-san," Arika interrupted. "Yes, I'm aware of the incident. She mentioned it in passing. You have my sympathies for the loss of your job, but I'm not sure what you think Negi can do about it."

"That's not the problem," Takamichi continued, looking startled but only briefly. "That's just the prelude. Konoemon-sensei is understandably furious about it, but when I was confronted by Eishun-sama, he ... he acted as though it was a joke. He even claimed that he'd also had relations with Konoka," he added, softly.

"And?" Arika asked.

"Don't you find that a bit odd?"

"Takahata. You know how Asuna came to be, correct?" she asked wearily.

"That, that and this are two completely different situations!" Takahata nearly shouted.

"Be that as it may, I'm not seeing your cause for concern."

"Do you really think a father would act that way if his daughter had been molested?"

Arika let out a disgusted noise. "There are all manner of fathers in the world. What I wonder is whether he was trying to provoke some sort of reaction from you, perhaps getting you to admit to other incidents of wrong-doing by posing as one who shares your 'interests'. Had you admitted to it, he would probably have killed you. I think you are making something of nothing," she said dismissively.

"Do you really think Eishun-sama would -"

"I think Eishun has changed, in many ways from the way he was when I knew him," Arika interrupted, shrugging. "Some ways for the better, some ways for the worse. What I describe is a fairly common social feint, something that someone with his responsibilities might well use." She paused. "Come to that, though, I was under the impression that he was heading back to Kyoto."

"He's still here, I just spoke with him," Takamichi pressed. "Please, Arika-sama, I am telling you that something very wrong is happening. I'm asking you to please trust my instincts!"

She frowned heavily, letting him know that he'd just made a very poor choice of words. "It is very difficult to trust the instincts of one whom one does not trust, Takahata," she said, standing up as she did so.

He closed his eyes. "Yes, I suppose that would be the case. I can't prove that my master didn't betray you, and I suppose that I am tainted -"

"Nor can you prove that you yourself did not," Arika interrupted again, this time softly.

Takamichi's eyes snapped open and he stared at her. "Me?" he asked hoarsely. "But, but I wasn't even entrusted with your secret. I couldn't have ..."

She shook her head and he trailed off. "You realize, of course, that the only person who can confirm that you were never told the secret is dead," she said quietly. "And even your own memories cannot truly be trusted, Takahata. Gateau was always too fast on the draw when it came to memory manipulation, and I have seen signs that you are the same way. How hard would it be for you to modify your own memories?"

All that Takamichi did for a moment was just stare at her with his jaw dropped.

There was a knocking at the door, and Arika rose up to answer it. "Oh, hello, Arika-sama," Ayaka said, as she stood there in a bathrobe, looking very nervous. "Is Negi in?"

She had been _right_ to double the dose. "Certainly, please come in. Takahata was just leaving, weren't you?" she added without even a glance in his direction.

* * *

Her plan was proceeding nicely, she decided the next day. The seed had been planted in all six of the girls, and she was certain that it had germinated in four of them. Setsuna's biology was a bit puzzling, unfortunately, so she couldn't be completely sure about her. Asuna's power made using such diagnostic tools on her somewhat difficult, but considering the frequency with which the boy had spewed forth his sperm into her daughter's cunt, it would be ridiculous if it hadn't fertilized one of her ovae by now.

Unless, of course, Asuna's tryst with Akashi Wataru was to be surprisingly fruitful. That was a troubling thought, as was the possibility that Mana was already pregnant by Rakan. She could be certain that no such condition had obtained in the case of Konoka and Setsuna, having been able to examine their sweet young bodies very carefully even before she'd embarked on this path, but such was not the case with Mana. She blamed the Japanese reserve, which kept her from doing such things as casually embracing people to facilitate a deeper examination. Admittedly, she could have done it anyway, playing the role of the overly affectionate foreigner, but that would square ill with her general persona as someone equally reserved.

Ah well. As these people - of whom she was growing ever more fond - were pone to say, it couldn't be helped.  
There had been a few other worrying moments in yesterdays revelry, such as when Ayaka had, after watching with wide eyes as Negi coupled with Mana and then with Kaede in his lightning infused form, that she wished to do the same. She proclaimed (semi-truthfully) that she was not afraid and (completely truthfully) that she loved her dear little brother no matter what he looked like, and wished to shower him with her love in his every form. Asuna, annoyed by this and certainly not afraid for the welfare of someone who was not her friend, had held her back while Arika attempted to make things a bit easier by pushing Setsuna forward, helped by Konoka.

What followed had been almost inhumanly beautiful, as Setsuna, as she reached her first of several orgasms, unconsciously allowed her wings to explode forth from her naked shoulders while she rocked upon him, looking angelic as she pounded her hips on Negi's decidedly godlike form. The sight would probably have done nothing to persuade Ayaka to abandon her plan. Thankfully, she'd been in the way of the wings as they swept out, and was knocked senseless by the force of the blow. By the time she'd recovered, it was already too late to continue in that way, though she'd settled for a normal bout of sex once Negi recovered. Then Konoka had finally had her turn, wrapping her legs around him while Asuna nearly crushed her breasts as she held them both tightly.  
_  
Now to decide on the next step,_ Arika mused. _Chisame-san, I think. How to -_

Her meditations were disturbed by the ringing of the phone. As Asuna and Konoka had taken Negi to the baths to fuck him stupider and give him a bath, not necessarily in that order, she was alone in the room, and so felt obligated to answer rather than let the machine take it. "Hello?" she said.

"Good morning, Arika-sama," said the cool, even voice that she recognized promptly. "I hope that I find you well this day."

"Good morning to you as well, Chachamaru-san," she said calmly, despite her surprise at the unexpected phone call. "Forgive me for omitting the formalities, but why are you calling Negi's room?"

"No forgiveness is necessary. In fact, you are precisely the person with whom I was hoping to speak. I am attempting to arrange a meeting between myself, Negi-sensei, Hakase Satomi-san, and Chisame-san. The latter two have already agreed to the meeting, but Chisame-san insisted on having it in a place where she feels ... safe ... in my presence."

Anyone else would probably never have noticed the brief hesitations around that word, which communicated a great deal of pain. But the mechanism pressed on regardless. "I proposed Negi-sensei's room as a safe place, and she eventually agreed to it as a location."

"Did you indeed?" Arika said flatly. "Before even consulting ... him?" She had been about to say 'me' but realized how it might sound at the last possible moment.

"It seemed a wiser course of action to ask forgiveness rather than permission," Chachamaru admitted. "And while I am certain that he would agree to it, I do recognize that you are presently acting as a gatekeeper, of sorts, and controlling access to him. I hope to be able to persuade you to agree to my proposal, as I believe you to be a logical and reasonable person."

"Do you indeed," Arika said, so flatly that it was no longer even a question. "I would be very interested to know how you intend to do that."

"In this way. I deduce, from your comments and actions during your rescue Yukihiro-san, Naba-san, and Chisame-san that the other children of your husband are of considerable interest to you. You would very much like to have further interactions with them, possibly but not necessarily of a sexual nature, and you have not to this point been able to do so with Chisame-san, because she has avoided contact with you. I deduce _that_ fact from the way that she agreed with feigned reluctance to a meeting where Negi-sensei would be present, but far more genuine discomfort and reluctance when she realized that you would be present as well.

"In summary - I believe that you will agree to this meeting because it serves your own goals and interests as well as mine," the girl whom Arika could no longer think of as a mechanism concluded.

"... well done," she said after a moment. "You are correct. I will pleased to host this conference. When would you -"  
"In one and a half hours."

Not a great deal of time, but she required very little in the way of preparations, once Negi returned and was informed of this. It would be wise to send Asuna off with Konoka and Setsuna. "I look forward to seeing you then," she said with total sincerity.

It was truly a pity that this one could not bear any of Negi's children. Truly, truly a pity.

* * *

_The next day, this happened._

As she exited the buidlding, Asuna breathed deeply for the first time since she'd arrived at the school. She looked down at the card Shizuna had given her. At the very least, she'd need to visit this doctor to get some -

"Why do you need to visit a doctor?" asked Arika, who was standing just beside her.

It was difficult, but Asuna mastered the impulse to shriek and jump away from the woman who had, to all appearances, come out of nowhere to stand beside her. She couldn't quite keep aggravation out of her tone when she spoke. "You followed me, didn't you?"

"Daughter. There is a person loose on this campus who specifically wants to kill you, and has already killed one person. Of course I followed you; were the world mine, you would go nowhere without a small army of bodyguards."

Asuna's head snapped in Arika's direction. "She's killed someone? What, who -"

"Apparently, one of the magic teachers disappeared last night while patrolling, leaving only a quantity of blood to mark his presence," Arika answered, her face utterly still, her voice low and level. "I haven't been able to find out more than that. My subversion of the school's surveillance system is not complete. Be that as it may, I would ask that you not try to get around my question. Why do you need to visit a doctor, Asuna?"

"I don't," Asuna answered, looking away and trying to tuck the card away in one of the pockets of her jeans. "But, y'know, if I did, it'd be good -"

"I saw the characters for Obstetrican and Gynecologist on the the card, daughter," Arika said, in the same low, level tone.

Asuna said nothing.

"This is a foreign land to me," her mother continued, looking away herself. "I really only know about it what I have learned since you brought me here, and what Nagi told me he had learned during his journeys here. One of those things was that the primary method of dealing with ... unwanted childen ... was one that required a surgical procedure."

Asuna struggled to keep her calm. "That, that was true, once, but not anymore. But ... yes. The doctor I'm seeing ... does that procedure."

"Indeed." Arika still wasn't looking at her. "I find that notion disgusting. But on the other hand, the primary method of dealing with unwanted children in my homeland was, at one time, to abandon them on a hillside shortly after their birth. Perhaps your way is more humane. Perhaps."

"I don't know from humane," Asuna snapped, no longer trying to keep calm. "But, but - do you really want to have this conversation in public?"

"I took the liberty of casting a spell to deceive the ears of those near us. Please try to avoid raising your voice, both to make it easy for the spirit it called up to improvise a plausible conversation about tonight's dinner, as well as for the obvious reason," Arika replied, facing her daughter again.

Reigning it in, Asuna began walking and Arika walked alongside her. "I got to talking with Negi last night, after we, well, and after you fell asleep."

"I don't sleep, I -"

"Uh-huh, well, while you were making snoring noises while waiting, we were talking about what he did with Chisame-san and Hakase." She glared at Arika. "I'm a little pissed that I didn't get to stick around and watch that."

"That is your right," Arika agreed.

"Gee, thanks. He, he was a little freaked out about it, about being a father, and, and then he told me about what you said a few days ago ..." She trailed off.

"Ah." The former queen nodded. "Yes, I can see why you might grow concerned."

Asuna clenched her fists and stopped in her tracks. "You are so damned casual about all of this!" she bit out. "I'm fifteen years old! And don't give me any crap about, 'I was twelve'!"

"Very well. I will not give you such crap. I will give you the truth. I would very much like grandchildren." She spread her hands. "I think most parents would."

"Yeah, but most parents don't want to become the parents of their grandchildren!" Asuna snapped.

"Voice," Arika said warningly. "And the circumstances are somwhat complex. But I think you can understand why I'd want more children, whose lives I would hopefully not miss as I've missed yours and Negi's."

"Okay, but ... when we were talking, he mentioned something about how you touched their stomachs and looked happy for no reason, and I remembered how you did that to me, too, and to Iinchou and Konoka and Setsuna, and, and - are you trying to get us all pregnant by him?"

"Yes," she answered. "That's exactly what I'm doing."

"Why?" Asuna pressed. "It can't just be because you want grandchildren. There's got to be more to it than that!"

Arika was tempted to sigh as she was reminded that for all the ways that her daughter reminded her of her own soul mate, neither she nor Nagi was as much of a fool as they seemed at times. There was indeed more to it, but she neither wanted to lie to the girl nor tell her the shattering truth just yet. "Isn't that reason enough? Asuna, do you want to know if you are with child?"

The question succeeded in distracting her. "You can really tell, this early on?" the girl asked.

Arika nodded. "One of the attributes of the Royal Magic which I have cultivated is an awareness of the functioning of my own body. With effort, I can extend that awareness to perceive changes in another's body as well. With you, it's a bit difficult, because you resist attempts to examine you magically as well as you do attempts to harm you. But I believe with enough time, I would be able to tell."

Asuna rolled her eyes. "With enough time, everyone is going to be able to tell, particularly if the answer's yes and I swell up like a balloon," she growsed. Then, much more quietly, she added, "I'm scared."

"You have a right to be."

As though she hadn't heard that, Asuna continued. "What if, what if it -"

"He or she, not it," Arika said, just a bit sharply.

"What if the baby is, is wrong? If he or she is sick, or twisted, because Negi is ..." She trailed off again.

"Asuna. Daughter. That is a possibility that you must face regardless of who you would choose to be the father of your children," Arika reminded her softly. "You are my daughter and my sister, for good or ill, and given how closely our father and my mother were related, I could probably add cousin to the list as well. Will you let fear rule your life?"

"I don't want to, but it's bigger than just my life, isn't it?" Asuna pointed out, almost tearfully.

"So it is," Arika allowed.

"It's easy for you, your crazy religion says all of this is all right," the girl said as she started to get angry again.

Arika seemed startled. "My reli- Ah." She nodded. "Tatsumiya. I'm afraid she's given you some bad information. Yes, I was associated with the Mysteries of Aphrodite and Eros for a short while after you were born. It was a casual thing ... well, no, it wasn't. I was looking to the gods in hopes that they'd grant me understanding of what had happened to me. I followed many paths in that time. But while the Mysteries accept incest, they don't actively encourage it, and in many ways try to subtly discourage it.

"And in any event, after the destruction of Ostia, I was officially anathematized by every religion in which I'd ever been initiated, including that one," she concluded. "Even without that, I don't really believe in anything I learned from them, anymore."

Asuna had listened to this in silence as her assumptions were undone. "Then why? If it's not because of that, then ... why?"

Arika drew in a deep breath. "Because it gives me pleasure, and I believe that it gives you pleasure too. Am I wrong? If so, then we'll stop. All you have to do, is say no. And I will respect that."

Asuna stared at her for a long moment, before falling forward and pressing her face into Arika's shoulder. Startled, there was another pause before Arika's arms came up to wrap around her daughter's shoulders.

"I don't want to stop," Asuna murmured. "Even though I'm scared, even though I don't know if it's right or not, I don't want to stop."

"Then we won't," Arika said. "Rather we will go on and go even further."

* * *

A little while later, Asuna poked her head out of the bushes to make sure they wouldn't be seen when they emerged. No one was present, so she stepped out of cover and beckoned for Arika to follow, which the former Queen did with unhurried grace.

"I can't believe you can walk after all that," Asuna said, just a bit enviously.

"Stamina, dear. One of our many gifts. Feeling better, I hope?" Arika asked as she walked beside her older child.

"A little," Asuna allowed. "I'm still not sure -"

"Nor should you be. Such decisions should never be untroubled. But I think you now are in a better state of mind, daughter, to hear some additional facts that might alter your views on this subject. What I told you about your situation is cold fact, but you should also know that -"

By that point in Arika's monologue, they had reached an intersection in the tree-lined pathway, and began to turn to head back towards the dormitory.

"Ah! Asuna-san and Arika-san, what a pleasant surprise!" said Ayaka from behind them.

Asuna couldn't quite suppress a sigh. She'd really been enjoying her private time with her mother, and even though she and Ayaka had gotten a lot closer than she'd ever thought they would, this was an interruption she hadn't looked for. Still, maybe she could just exchange a few pleasantries and be on her way without an argument breaking out.

Okay, it was never going to happen, but she might as well give it a shot. So she painted on a smile and turned to look at Ayaka, who was wearing a bright pink sun dress and white heels. She was surprised to see that the class representative was being accompanied by a handsome looking fellow who looked to be in his sixties or so, who was regarding them from behind a pair of thick spectacles. The impulse to tease her about hanging around with the sort of guys she thought Asuna found attractive was almost overpowering, but she pushed it down.

"Ayaka-san," she said instead. "What a fortuitous meeting!" Let her puzzle that one out.

"Indeed," Ayaka agreed, sort of ruining the effect Asuna had been going for. "I was hoping to introduce you and Arika-san to my grandfather. Grandfather, this is Asuna-san, whom I believe I've told you about already, and her mother."

"Indeed," the old man said, looking long at Asuna. "She's just as I imagined her to be, from your descriptions of her."

The hairs on the back of Asuna's neck started to stand up for no readily apparent reason. She had to be imagining things. He couldn't be leering at her, could he?

Beside her, Arika had gone utterly still. "Ayaka," she said, not bothering with honorifics. "This man is the person you know as your grandfather?" Her voice was nearly without tone.

Ayaka blinked at the odd question and the informality with which she was being addressed. "Yes, that's what I said. He's my grandfather. Is something -"

"Have you ever seen this man," Arika asked, voice unchanging, "without his glasses?"

And suddenly, the old man laughed. It was not a pleasant sound, not an indication of mirth or pleasure, but something far colder. "I suppose I shouldn't really have expected these to fool you, of all people, with these," he said, touching his hand to the spectacles' frames.

"Not when your face is indelibly etched in my memories," Arika agreed steadily.

Ayaka, who had clearly been spooked by the sound of the old man's laughter, took a few quick steps that brought her to the side of Asuna and Arika before turning to face him. "Grandfather, you are behaving very strangely all of a sudden," she said with feigned calm. "May I ask how it is that you know Arika-san?"

"Let us dispense with the absurdities," he replied. "You are not the daughter of Yukihiro Teruo, and so should not call me grandfather. I was involved in other affairs, or I would surely have done something about Springfield's cuckolding of the boy when it occurred. Or perhaps not, since the other side of the absurdity of calling me grandfather is that Teruo is not my son." And with that, he removed the glasses.

And abruptly, they could all see his mismatched eyes, one blue, one green.

Just like Arika's.

Just like Asuna's.

"No," Asuna whispered, knowing who this man was, knowing who was leering at her, knowing -

"Who are you, sir!" Ayaka thundered. "Who do you think you are, posing as my grandfather? Where is he? And who are you? What is your name?"

"Your companions already know my name, but allow me to introduce myself nonetheless. I am Alladia Autarkia vespertatia Entheofushia. As to the whereabouts of your supposed grandfather," he continued, much more scornfully, "he is long-dead, since before you were born, in fact. He provided me with a useful cover identity that I have enjoyed a great deal. But the time for such deceptions is over, and I've known that since you escaped from your captivity, daughter."

"Indeed?" Arika asked quietly, eyes never leaving his face. Her next words were not a question. "You were responsible for that, weren't you. I am surprised that you didn't take credit before this. It's uncharacteristic of your type of egomania."

The old man sneered. "I have learned subtlety since you stole my throne from me, girl. Tell me, do the memories of your brief reign console you when you think of what I have stolen from you?"

Arika's eyes went wide. "_That_ was you as well?" she cried out.

Now he blinked as he stepped back. "'As well'? Has the realization of your barren womb driven you mad, girl, or do you not realize -"

As this confrontation had gone on, Asuna had silently drawn out her pactio card and was preparing to unsheathe her sword, eyes nearly wild with fury. Ayaka's hand on hers and a quietly whispered plea for calm had halted her, but now they both turned in confusion as Arika, incredibly, began to laugh.

"You are the mad one, you senile delinquent," Arika said at last. "A child grows within me at this very moment. But I will have the truth of your misdeeds from you before we are done here today."

"I don't think you will, really," the old man said, looking oddly disconcerted. "This is not quite the way that I wanted our reunion to occur. I still have considerable work to do before that occurs, but I suppose that this is for the best. I am free now to do that work rather than continue the pretense of touring this place with a certain hoyden." That got Ayaka to snap her head around to glare at him, but he ignored the look just as he ignored her words.

"If you'll excuse me, then, I'll be off and attending to my plans," he said, taking a step backwards.

"We won't excuse you -" Asuna snapped.

"Then I leave unexcused," he said, then turned and bounded off in a gigantic leap that soon had him out of sight.

Arika swore an unfamiliar oath. "We must be after him!"

"Not necessary. Whatever he's planning, he just lost," Ayaka replied. "Right, Miyazaki?"

"Right, Iincho," said Nodoka as she stepped from behind one of the trees lining the pathway, with her Diary out and open.

"Teamwork and forgiveness," Ayaka said to a startled Arika and Asuna, as Yue also stepped out from behind one of the other trees. "Aren't they wonderful lessons?"

* * *

"Pregnant? She's pregnant? How can she be pregnant?"

He'd been saying that for a while now, and it was honestly starting to get on Tsukuyomi's nerves. That wasn't very hard to do, but it was a bit surprising. When she'd first met him, he'd seemed completely in control of himself, in a way that was very sexy, though she'd been too busy with her sempai's daddy to really explore those possibilities. Watching him fall apart like this was sort of depressing.

After all, she wanted the woman he was going on and on and on about to accept her destiny as her mother, and every time she had a kid with someone else, that got harder and harder to do. Well, harder might be too strong a word. Killing people was easy. Killing babies was really easy. But when you killed a lot of them, people started objecting for whatever weird reason and trying to protect them and that just raised the necessary body count even further, and it went on and on on.

Like Alladia-sama was doing now. Interesting parallel there. She'd had enough of sitting around in silence watching him freak out, and decided to join the conversation he was having as he paced back and forth in the monitor room.

"Why's it so bad that she's pregnant again?" she asked.

He whirled around to stare at her with wide, angry eyes. "I don't know!" he yelled.

"Ah, so funny!" she said, laughing politely at his joke. "No, really, why?"

"I'm telling you, I don't know!" he repeated. "I, I just have the sense that something has gone very wrong with my plan because of this, even if I can't ... can't quite put my finger on what exactly it is!" His hand was over his face, as though trying to shield it as he admitted all of this.

"Reeally," Tsukuyomi said, fishing in the purse that she carried at her side. "That's interesting." Out came the phone, and she started to dial a certain number.

"Who are you calling, wench?" he snapped.

"I'm calling the number you told me to call if you ever started going on about things going wrong with your plan," she told him calmly. "I don't - ah, moshi-moshi!"

"I never told you any such thing!" Alladia protested.

Tsukuyomi wasn't really listening to him anymore. The voice on the other side of the phone commanded far more of her attention, though she did briefly look at her employer with a speculative stare. "Ooookayyy," she said. "Um, Alladia-sama, apparently one of your allies has prepared contingencies in this event, and he wants to talk to you. If you'll turn your attention to the big screen?"

He frowned, but nonetheless did so, waiting for the screen to illuminate.

He was still waiting when Tsukuyomi ran him through from behind. His neck managed to bend enough to look at the sword blade protuding from his stomach, and his mouth opened as though to say something. But he didn't get anything out before his eyes rolled up and he dropped to the ground, to start decaying with unseemly haste.

"Ew," she said, wrinkling her nose.

"Spare me your complaints," said the voice of the man she'd just killed - or so she'd assumed - over the phone. "I will arrive at location shortly."

"You will, or another homonculous will?" Tsukuyomi asked craftily.

"... we shall see. In any event, please describe what he said about my plans going wrong. In detail."

Tsukuyomi rolled her eyes. Why couldn't they just let her go around killing people? Why did they always insist on pushing her past such comfortable boundaries? Why did she put up with it rather than just killing everyone she ever met? Nonetheless, she answered his question in as much detail as she could.

She'd never killed anyone more than once after all. This was a rare opportunity!

* * *

"There's something I have to ask you," Nodoka said quietly, as she sat across the table from Arika in Negi and Asuna's room, temporarily cleared of its other residents.

"Then ask," Arika said again, with a faint smile curling her lips this time.

Nodoka hesitated for several moments before pressing on. "How did Asuna make you pregnant? Is this something all magical princesses can do?" she added before she realized that Arika had fallen on her side for some reason.

"No," the former queen said, somewhat more loudly than was her wont, as she pushed herself upright once more. "Although I suppose, with the right spells - but that is neither here nor there. Asuna is not the father of my child. Our bond is intimate yet not exclusive." _And now she will ask -_

"Then who is the father?"

Arika smiled coolly. "Come now, Miyazaki-san. You are one of the most clever of Negi's associates. You should be able to realize the identity of the only male that I've been around in the weeks since I was freed from captivity. And that had it happened during captivity, I would surely have mentioned it before now. I know you can grasp it without having to be told."

And indeed, she clearly could. "Negi-sensei?" Nodoka said, eyes shrunk down to tiny dots.

Arika graced her with a nod.

"But," Nodoka said, and found it somewhat difficult to move beyond that word. "But. But. But. But he is your son," she finally gasped.

Arika momentarily considered taking the girl into her confidence. Though she could lie easily, she actually preferred to tell the truth when possible. Still, the revelation would probably just confuse her. "As I said to him, he is the perfect combination of what I admire most in myself and what I desire most in Nagi. How could I possibly resist that?" And that was true, for she had said that, even if she no longer believed it and had other motives. Time now to strike at where the girl was most vulnerable. "You of all people should understand what it is to desire something so much that you will do anything to have it."

The girl winced. "But, I mean ... what about Chisame? I don't like her, but ... doesn't it bother Negi-sensei to be cheating on her?"

For a brief interlude, Arika could only stare at Nodoka in near-total befuddlement. And then she understood. Somehow, this clever, clever girl had developed the idea that Chisame was Negi's one true love. She hoped that Chisame never learned of this, or the dislike Nodoka felt for her would be fully requited. For now, though, it would be best to tell only part of the truth.

"Chisame accepts the situation, for she has found momentary happiness elsewhere as well, as I think you know." And she could tell from the look on the girl's face that she was right about that. "What shape our association will ultimately take remains to be seen. But I, and I think Negi as well, would be very happy if you and your dear friend Yue were to join it as it takes shape."

Nodoka blinked. "You mean -"

"Yes," Arika interrupted. "I do mean. But that discussion can wait. We must now gather our forces to begin talk of war."

* * *

"Our main assault force will be split up into groups of two. Keep your partner in line of sight at all times. Kotaro-kun, I have a special assignment for you and Natsumi-san, that I'll explain in just a little bit. Um ... I guess that's everyone ... oh. Akira-san, will you help Ako-san in -"

"Actually, sensei, I -" Akira broke off, visibly steeled herself, then blurted out, "I've decided that I want to make a pactio with you."

Dead silence fell.

"Good idea," said Satomi after a moment. "He's a very good kisser."

"That's not why," Akira said, blushing brightly. "I, I want to be a help. And not have to stand back and watch."

"Akira-san, you don't have to -" Negi started to say.

"We accept your generous offer," interrupted Arika.

"Yes, welcome to the Ala Alba," Asuna agreed, then clapped her hands. "Okay, everyone, out of the room, let's give them some space." It took a few minutes, but eventually everyone except for Negi, Akira and Arika were out of the room, and Arika only stayed long enough to finish drawing the circle, and favor Akira with a smile before departing.

"Your mother's very nice," Akira said, more to fill in the silence than anything else.

"Yes, she is, but she does have a few odd ways," Negi replied apologetically. "Akira-san, you really don't have to do this. You've been a lot of help without a pactio, and there's no reason for you to -"

"Negi-sensei," Akira interrupted gently. "I want to do this. I've seen what Ako, and Makie, and Yuna have become because they made a pactio with you. They've become more of what they always were. I want to stand beside my friends, and beside you, too, sensei. I want to be able to do more to help."

"... okay," Negi said at last. If you could, well, kneel down, then I'll, um." Incredibly, he was blushing.  
Akira took a deep breath, then knelt down before him, closed her eyes and puckered her lips. A moment later, she felt a pair of lips resting gently on her own. They didn't feel anything like the lips of the girls she'd been kissing. Even though sensei was still too young to have any facial hair, his lips were somehow distinctly male ... or maybe that was the odor that came up through her nose from the closeness of him.

Her mouth opened just a bit, and she was startled to feel his tongue push forward past their locked lips, to rub against her own tongue. Well. This too was part of kissing, after all, and she supposed that it made sense that the deeper and more passionate the kiss, the more potent the pactio produced by it. That made sense. Right?

How long were they supposed to keep this up, anyway? No one had told her anything. What if she broke off before things were done? What if -

And then Negi was the one to pull back, and glance to one side. He froze.

"Where is it?" he asked.

"Eh?" said Akira, just a little bit dazed by the effects of the kiss.

"The card," Negi explained. "It should have appeared right beside the circle. But, but it didn't." He turned to look at the other side of the circle, in hope that it had simply shown up over there instead, but this proved an empty hope as well. The card was nowhere to be seen.

"Did, did I do something wrong? Should I have used my tongue -" Akira started to ask.

"No! No, no, I'm sure that's not it," Negi rapidly reassured her. "Um ... maybe, maybe mother doesn't really know how to do the circles all that well, and she messed up this time." Which didn't explain why there hadn't been any problems with Ayaka or Satomi's pactios. "Let's get her in here, and maybe she can explain."

A moment later, Arika came back in and examined the circle, as well as peering closely at Akira, who felt a little uncomfortable with the stress of her regard.

Finally, the former queen sighed. "I was afraid of this. Negi, it appears that the spirits which govern pactios are reluctant to bestow one upon Akira-san for whatever reason, just as they were reluctant to bestow one on Karakuri. We could speculate for ages on why this might be," she quickly added, to forestall the cries of 'why not' that were about to burst out of the two young people. "And it would get us nowhere. For now, the only reasonable solution is to do what you did then."

"Ummmm," Akira hummed hesitantly. "What ... exactly ... _did_ he do then?"

"Kiss harder, of course," Arika said as she settled down to watch. This should be interesting. Admittedly there was a chance that if Negi pushed the limits of magic again to force a pactio on a creature without a soul, he would either break himself or shatter the world around him. But either result would be fascinating to observe.

"All right," Negi said, face set with grim resolution. "I'll do it. Akira-san, are you ready?"

"Should I use the tongue?" she asked in a bewildered tone.

"It couldn't hurt," Arika opined.

And then, before she could say or do anything else, he was upon her, pressed up against her both with his lips and his body, almost forcing her to the floor beneath him. With what tiny fragments of her mind could still think, Akira was amazed again at just how strong he was, how tight and toned his little body had become. And his tongue! Where had he learned some of this stuff? She answered back, without much confidence that he could possibly be feeling good because of anything she was doing.

And then, if her eyes hadn't been tightly shut, an observer would have seen them cross, as she felt a bulge below, where his hips were pressing up against her stomach. Evidently, she was wrong about him feeling good.

Negi was oblivious to all this. Just as before, he was silently addressing whoever it was that was in charge of the pactio system. One might have called it a prayer, of sorts, except that prayer does not normally include threats of terrible violence against the entities thus invoked. Yet for all the fury, there was a tenderness in it as well, as he spoke to the anonymous higher powers of how sweet, and kind, and very brave, Akira was, and how much she deserved to have some sign of their bond. _So once again,_ he concluded, _**do not screw with me!**_

For all that, it seemed that there was to be nothing, nonetheless. Just as before, he didn't sense the formation of the card anywhere nearby. And worse than that, something was happening to Akira. For a terrible moment, he had the sensation of trying to hold water in his hands, and any sense of the person he was pressed up against vanished. _No!_ he thought. _Come back to me!_ And forced his eyes open.

Instantly, he relaxed. It must only have been his imagination. Akira was right there in his arms, flustered and blushing and naked as the day she was born, but safe and hey wait a minute what was she doing naked?

He jerked back from her lips, leaving her blinking. After a moment, she looked down at herself, and her blush deepened. Negi was somewhat startled by the fact that his stoic pupil blushed all over.

"Um," Akira said, once she'd managed to find her voice. "What happened to my clothes?"

"You're sitting on them," said Arika, watching with amazement. The girl had transformed to liquid and then in seconds been restored to flesh by the sheer force of Negi's will. In the process, her clothes and dropped right through her. "Strange things happen when one pushes the boundaries of magic," she added, in an attempt to sound like she knew what was happening. After realizing that neither of them seemed ready to move, she pressed on. "Unless you were planning to go for a permanent pactio, you might want to get dressed."

"Then it worked?" Negi asked.

Arika nodded and held up the card, which depicted Akira as a mermaid wearing boxing gloves. "It did indeed. Since we don't know just what this can do, you might want to hang back and look after the base team," she added to Akira.

"Thank you," the swimmer said faintly as she took the card in her hands, holding it like a treasure.  
_  
This one definitely has to be in,_ Arika mused.

And so they assembled at the rally point even as Asakura's remotes began to move through the labyrinths beneath Mahora. The rally point happened to be one of the great caves that opened up on the subterranean lake, specifically that one that had been used to store the large number of robot warriors employed by Chao during the festival.

"Makes sense," Arika observed to her chosen partner. "Even though the academy's administration have been alerted to these blind spots in their surveillance, what with one thing and another, there hasn't been time enough to cover those spots."

Haruna could only nod. Just as when Arika had casually volunteered to partner with her for this operation, she had no idea what she was supposed to say. It wasn't a situation she enjoyed. Here she was, waiting for the signal to go in and begin assaulting a group of mercenaries out to destroy her home, and all she could do was wonder. "Why me?" she finally murmured.

Curse Arika's keen ears. "I chose you for a number of reasons," the former queen replied calmly. "First of all, your abilities supplement my weaknesses. As I said, I can cast only a few minor magics, certainly not the battle spells that my son favors. Your abilities as a summoner, then, will be greatly useful for any confrontation in which we find ourselves. Secondly, I judge that you are just as brave in your way as your brother in his."

Haruna jerked. "You know my brother?" she asked.

"I met him some thirteen years ago, during his European journeys. Under the circumstances, I can well imagine why he wouldn't have talked about it. But he impressed me quite a bit. In many ways." She smiled fondly at the memories, then grew serious once more. "And you have impressed me as having much of the same steel in your character."

Of all people, Haruna was the least deaf to subtext, and the implications of that statement were fairly obvious to her. Now was not the time to be addressing them, however. "I see. Thank you," she said, still a bit tense.

"And finally, should it happen that you were seriously injured in this affray, you might be moved to unburden yourself of certain of your secrets to your companion," Arika continued. "So it would be well for all concerned if that companion was already acquainted with those secrets. And also motivated to see that you were ... taken care of, shall we say," she added after a moment to consider.

Haruna, again, was not deaf to subtext. And the knives that Arika called up by her pact were sheathed at the woman's hips.

* * *

Arika checked the door, determined it was locked through those weird extra-senses of hers, and nodded before stepping back. Haruna filled out the sketch she'd made based on a battering ram she'd seen in a movie a year or so ago, and then let it expand off the page until it smashed the door off its hinges. Then it slid back to allow them to charge in.  
On the other side was a command centre much like the one Satomi had described when telling them about Chao's set-up. Standing in front of the monitors, glowering and bored-looking respectively, were the person that Arika had described to them as her father and the girl Haruna had seen a few times - Tsukuyomi.

"You!" Alladia hissed, making the word a curse.

"Me," Arika agreed, bounding over the desks to approach them. Fulfilling their expectations, Tsukuyomi stepped forward to stand between Arika and her master, drawing her sword.

"Kill them. Kill them both!" the man snapped.

Tsukuyomi tilted her head. "Nah," she said, then reversed her sword and drove it backwards towards Alladia's chest. He was standing far enough behind her, however, that he could see the blow coming and dodge back out of the way.

"Treachery!" he nearly shrieked. "I am always surrounded by traitors and -"

"Takes one to know one," opined Haruna as she summoned up a hundred-handed giant - okay, so it was more like a seventy-handed giant, but nobody else was likely to count them out - and sent it past Tsukuyomi, whose focus was solely on Arika at the moment, to slam into the supposed king and hold him up against the far wall.

"Ah, mommy," Tsukuyomi was saying, as she faced off with Arika, her two swords held in check by Arika's two knives, the older woman's arms trembling faintly under the pressure. "At last we meet."

Perhaps, had Tsukuyomi known of the anger that hid just beneath Arika's placid surface, that had been boiling since she'd learned the truth about Negi, she would have chosen some other greeting. Most likely not. "You are no child of mine!" Arika snapped, then headbutted the young girl.

The unusual attack caught Tsukuyomi completely offguard, and she stumbled back a pace with a low whine. Freed from her lock, Arika pressed further on, taking advantage of the momentary lapse in the girl's defense to slam a foot up into her abdomen and send her back against the giant TV screen at the room's head. This blow left her reeling even further, as did the abruptly thrown chair that Arika pitched at her.

"Fighting with the furniture," the girl murmured as Arika closed in. "I'm disappointed in you, momm-"

"Stop calling me that!" Arika demanded as she knocked Tsukuyomi down to the floor, kicked the swords out of her hands and sent them sliding to the far wall, climaxing her maneuver by stapling the girl's hands to the ground with her blades. That finally provoked something more than a taunt from her - instead, a low wail of pain escaped her mouth, sending a chill up Haruna's spine as she stood watch over Alladia's struggles.

"And now," Arika said as she rose up and turned to look at him. There was a dangerous look in her eyes, as of one pushed much too far. "And now, we will have answers from you." Slowly, she began walking towards him.

"Uh, m-maybe we ought to wait until Nodoka gets here so she can probe his mind?" said Haruna.

Arika slowed, and reason started to come back into her eyes. "Perhaps you're ri-"

"He can't tell you anything," Tsukuyomi said through whimpers of pain. "He's just a homonculous."

Arika's eyes narrowed. "Indeed." And then another knife was in her hand, and then it was flying through the air to slam into "Alladia's" throat. He choked, gurgled and died ... then decomposed rapidly. "It would seem that he is."

"Of course he is," said Tsukuyomi. "I wouldn't lie to you, mommy."

"I'm not sure why you're calling me that," Arika said, slowly and carefully. "Because I am very certain that I am _not_ your mother."

Tsukuyomi actually managed to laugh through her tears of pain. "Oh, don't be silly, mommy. You're the mommy I was supposed to have, you see."

"Really," Arika said non-comittally.

"Oh, yes," the mad girl said, warming to her theme. "Daddy told me all about you. It was so obvious that he was utterly in love with you, and so I decided he shouldn't have to settle for anything less. He was so mad about what I did to the bitch who birthed me, though. I can't understand it, really. But anyway, I ran away to look for you, and then I got a little distracted with this and that, you know how it is, but here we are at last!"

"Yes. Here we are."

Haruna, who had drawn back her summons and was watching this discussion with what might be called horror on her face, realized with a start that Arika was trembling. "Are you -"

Arika held up a hand. "Let me see if I understand this," she said, looking down at Tsukuyomi. "Your wish is for me to come back and live with you and your father, as a wife to him and a mother and lover to both of you. But you have never even known my touch. You don't know what I like."

"I can be what you like," Tsukuyomi said, eyes shining. "I can be anything."

"Let us test that theory," Arika said, dropping to her knees beside the girl's supine form.

"Wait a minute, you can't be serious -" Haruna started to say.

And then the screaming started.

"Dear me, so soon," Arika's voice said, audible despite the terrified screams that were coming from Tsukuyomi's throat. "I am only getting warmed up. You have a lot to learn. But I am happy to teach you."

Haruna ran.

* * *

Lying on her bed, carefully examining the latest Victoria's Secret catalogue for her next strategic purchase, Kakizaki Misa was abruptly aroused from her studies by the sound of a knock on the door. She idly entertained the notion of not answering it. It wasn't like it was a boy, after all. Any would-be gentleman callers would be stopped at the dormitory's entrance, and those with whom she was already acquainted would know her cell number and know how to call and arrange a meeting.

That meant that whoever was knocking on her door was probably one of her classmates. And the allure of a quiet evening at home, freed of the drama into which Madoka and Sakurako had recently descended, was great indeed. In contrast, opening the door to whatever drama was waiting for her on the other side was not nearly such a pleasant thought.

But then there was another knock, and Misa realized, regretfully, that whoever it was would not be dissuaded by her attempts to create the illusion that no one was home. So she closed her catalogue, filed it away in the nightstand drawer with the others, and got up and headed to the door.

"Hey, Ako," Misa said, trying to be as polite as possible to a nominal friend. "Akira-san. Yuna-san. What brings you here this evening?"

"We need to talk to Kugimii and Saku," Ako answered for the group. "Are they here?"

"Nope," Misa answered, not bothering to keep the complete lack of regret out of her voice. "I think they're on a date, with each other, if you can believe that ... buuut then again, I suppose some of you wouldn't find that all that surprising," she added after a moment's consideration.

Ako looked crestfallen. "On a date?"

"It's, it's probably just a friendly meal between friends," Akira tried to reassure her.

"Well, there's definitely going to be some eating out," Misa said bluntly. "They've been doing it pretty much constantly. It's very distracting. A little funny, like when that earthquake happened yesterday, and Saku's all happy and saying, 'It really does happen!'" she explained, delivering the last phrase in a frighteningly good imitation of Sakurako's voice.

Yuna glared. "Y'know, it occurs to me that maybe we shouldn't be having conversations like this out in the hallway where anyone can overhear them?"

Misa shrugged. "C'mon in, then." She stood back to let them walk past her into the room, then closed the door. "Should I take it from your presence that you're now involved in this polygon they've got going?" she asked Yuna once that was done.

"Yeah," Yuna replied. "Should I take it from your comments that you're not?"

"Oh yeah," Misa said firmly. "I mean, really, whatever makes you happy, but the only way I'm doing anything with a girl is if some guy is giving me a realllly good present."

Ako and Akira flinched as they sat down beside each other on the same bed they'd been in earlier. For her part, Yuna just glared. "Does the commodification of your sexuality not bother you at all?" she asked.

"Nope," she answered bluntly, inwardly marveling at Yuna's unexpected sophistication. Maybe having a teacher for a dad did do her a few favors. "Does being expected to receive only transient emotional gratification for the use of your sexuality not bother you at all?"

"Okay, what are you talking about?" Akira interjected.

"I'm talking about how queen enjo kosai here is basically just prostituting herself," Yuna said scornfully.

"Hey!" Ako said, frowning. "Don't say mean things like that!"

"Ako, relax. I don't get bothered by the term," Misa said. "Don't you think it's a little funny that her attitude can basically be summarized as, 'It's wrong for a woman to receive payment for services rendered, when those services are sexual in nature?' Can you think of another area where anyone, male or female, is not only expected to do something for no pay but is actually criminalized for accepting it?"

"But ... sex is something you're supposed to do with someone you love," Akira pointed out.

"That's what I mean by transient emotional gratification," Misa said patiently. "Think about it. Suppose you're 'in love' and then you get dumped and fall 'out of love'. What do you have to show for the weeks you spent 'in love'? Bittersweet memories, at best. In contrast, if you make sure to get presents every time you have sex, when the relationship is over, you still have the presents." She pointed at her earrings. "I haven't seen the guy who gave me these in months. Aren't they nice?"

"This is pointless," Yuna said as she headed for the door. "Whatever we were hoping to find here, this bullshit isn't it. I'm going back to bed."

"No, you're not," Akira said as Yuna's hand reached for the doorknob. Her eyes had suddenly gone very distant, just like they'd been before Ako had gotten her into the shower a little while ago. "You're going to join them, aren't you?"

Slowly, Yuna let her hand fall from the doorknob back to her side, and just as slowly, she turned to look back at Akira with a disturbed expression. "How did you know about that? I was only just thinking about it, and - how did you even know about them?"

"Which them are we talking about here?" Misa interjected as she and Ako watched this exchange with confused and (in Misa's case) curious expressions.

Akira didn't seem to have heard her. "I don't ... I mean, I don' t know how I know, but somehow ... maybe it's because it's _him_ ... I guess. Maybe."

"Which _him_ are we talking about here?" Misa asked, starting to get a bit annoyed. Particularly when she noticed obvious understanding spreading across Ako's face, as she looked from Akira to Yuna.

"Is she right? About you and him?" Ako quietly asked.

"Sort of," Yuna answered, looking sort of embarassed.

"Y'know, having conversations that someone can't follow when you're _in their room_ has got to be the height of rudeness," said Misa, quite angrily.

"I was just leaving," Yuna snapped back at her.

"I'm coming with you," Akira said faintly.

"I'm coming with both of you," Ako added quickly.

Misa watched them walk out of her room without a word of farewell. "I am never going to know what that was all about, am I?" she asked no one in particular.

As it happened, she was wrong.

* * *

"You're kidding," Yue said, aghast as she sat heavily on the bed while Nodoka stood in front of her.

"I'm not. She told me herself," Nodoka assured her. "And she asked me to come see her later. I think she meant now."

"Well, you're not going, of course," said Yue "I've thought there was something very wrong about that woman from the first time we met, and this just confirms it! Nodoka, when I tried to talk to Haruna about what happened on her mission, she wouldn't say anything! Haruna! Wouldn't say anything! She was too upset! Think about what that means!"

"It means that she's very frightening," Nodoka agreed.

"Yes, and -"

"But I'm not afraid of anything, Yue, as long as you're with me." She finished by reaching out to brush her fingers against Yue's cheek.

Yue found herself leaning into the caress, almost unwillingly. "So what you're saying is, you'll only go if I go with you?" she asked, faintly.

"Well ... we said that we were going to compete fairly, right?" Nodoka asked, smiling cutely. "I didn't go through all that to get you back so we could stop at the very end."

Yue drew in a deep breath. "Okay. Let's go."

"Go where?" Collet asked from the top bunk as she rolled over to look down at the two of them. Her eyes widened as she realized what she was looking at, and she coughed in an embarassed sort of way. Nodoka simply met her gaze steadily, and without drawing her hand back from Yue's cheek.

"Ah!" Yue said. "I thought you went with Bea and Iinchou to interrogate the prisoner?"

"They decided they didn't need three of us for that. Where are you going?" Collet repeated, a little insistently.

"Well, it's sort of ..." Yue started to explain, then trailed off.

Collet made an annoyed, whiney noise. "Yue! It's bad enough that you lett us out of your plans when you went after that Tsukuyomi person. It's not right for you to just forget all about us like this. Wherever you're going, I'm coming with you!"

"Uh, I'm not -"

"Fine," Nodoka interrupted.

"Eh?"

"Really?" Collet asked, a bit surprised.

"I'm willing to compete fairly with anyone," Nodoka said, firmly, her eyes locked on Collet. _Because I'm going to win. Negi is going to be mine, and Yue is going to be mine.  
_

* * *

Yuna paused outside the door to Asuna and Konoka's room, largely because she was somewhat startled to see Nodoka, Yue and one of the Ariadne girls whose names she'd never really bothered to learn because she didn't care approaching said door from the other way down the hall. They looked a bit surprised to see her, too. Well, who knew but that they were actually expecting her and were just surprised to see her accompanied by Akira and Ako? Probably not, but unless she broke this awkward moment of silence and stillness by asking, she'd never know.

Except that, again, she didn't care. So instead, she hesitantly raised a hand, and, after a moment of delay, knocked on the door. A quick aside glance showed that Nodoka looked a little put out by that. She'd probably wanted to do it herself. It was tempting to give her the hairy eyeball, but Yuna was more mature than that. Okay, she wasn't, but there wasn't time.

The door opened a minute later, revealing Arika in a loosely belted bathrobe and slippers. The former queen smiled broadly at her. "Yuna-chan," she said, warmly. "I was hoping you would join us this evening. And I see you've brought quite a few friends, too." She looked over Akira and Ako approvingly, and then turned to watch as Nodoka, Yue and whatserears came up, nodding to them ... then blinking as she saw the girl from Ariadne, who was regarding her with mild shock.

Arika began to speak in a language none of them recognized, which seemed largely composed of short cries and whines. After a few moments of stunned amazement, the Ariadne girl - Collet! That was her name! - answered her in that same language.

"You are too kind," Arika said after a few moments of this. "Be that as it may, it is rude for us to continue speaking in this fashion that none but we two can understand. Won't you all please come in?"

Yuna swallowed. "Then ... we're having a party?" She couldn't hear any noise at all from the room behind Arika, and certainly none that she associated with, ahem, celebration.

"Of course," Arika said, looking surprised at the question. "We have had a victory, after all, and such things should be celebrated. But the others have removed to a somewhat more expansive area for the festivities. Even before you had arrived, the room was a bit too small for comfort. Nonetheless, please come in. We should discuss a few things first, I think."

With a gulp, Yuna entered the room, followed closely by the others. The door closed firmly behind them.

Several minutes later, they emerged again, the casual clothes they'd been wearing replaced with bathrobes much like the one Arika had been wearing, and started towards the bathing area.

Ako was clinging to Akira with a somewhat frightened look on her face. "Are, are we seriously going to do this?" she asked her friend quietly.

"It's only a little bit different from the thing with Sakurako and Madoka," Akira answered with the same strange look of distant serenity on her face that she'd had since she spoke up in the cheerleader's room.

"I think it sort of is, really," Ako whined. "And, I mean, Negi-kun is -"

"That's what makes it right," Akira interjected smoothly, with no sign of worry at all. No sign of any emotion, actually. She seemed calm even beyond what would be normal for Akira. "It is certainly right that we become one with our Master."

"Well, of course, I love him, but wait what Master?" Ako asked.

Akira simply nodded. And such was her placidity that Ako found it impossible to say anything at all.

A bit behind them, Collet was clinging to Yue in a way that would, in a more visual medium, have been very reminiscent of the way Ako was clinging to Akira, complete with Nodoka walking ahead of them and doing her best to ignore them just like Yuna had been trying to ignore her friends discomfort. "Yue-yue, I'm scared," Collet confessed.

Nodoka missed a step as she fought the urge to turn around and inform Collet that using certain pet names for certain people was utterly prohibited under the Because Nodoka Said So Law of the current year.

"It's all right, Collet, I won't let them do anything to you that you don't want them to do," Yue assured her ... with absolutely nothing in the way of confidence that she was going to be able to do that.

"Eh?" Collet said, blinking. "Oh, that's not it. We're not at Ariadne, so it's not like I can be expelled for moral turpitude. I'm just terrified of what's going to happen when Iinchou finds out that I knew about this and didn't bring her."

"... oh," said Yue. She was never entirely sure what possessed her to say what she said next. "Would you like to go get her, maybe?"

Nodoka slowly turned to glare at her.

"No, that's a bad idea," Yue said quickly. "Bea would want to come too, and this is already complicated enough. Yes. Bad idea."

"I'm a little amazed that they're doing this in the bath-house," Yuna said, somewhat oblivious to all of this. "I mean, anyone could just walk in -"

"Only if they could walk through the forbiddance ward the way we just did," Yue supplied. "I'm guessing Arika-sama put the key in the tea she had us drink."

"It was very good tea, too," Collet said. "I still prefer water, though."

* * *

With one more apprehensive gulp, Yuna slid the bath door open.

Beyond it was the purest example of bacchanalia she'd ever seen. Immediately in front of them, at the edge of the big pool, Hakase of all people was lying on her back, panting and twitching and occasionally letting lose a tiny scream from what Konoka and Setsuna were doing between her legs. It shouldn't have been so much of a shock to see this as it was; when the mad scientist had revealed that she was now pacito'd to Negi, Yuna had suspected that something of this nature must have happened to bring it about. But she'd never imagined that she'd see the class' other brilliant but eccentric inventor brought screaming to orgasm by those sweet lips that Yuna found herself yearning for once again.

To her side, Yuna heard Nodoka sighing in what sounded like disgust. "Chisame really will do it with anyone, won't she?" the library girl muttered.

Following Nodoka's line of sight over to the far side of the pool, she wasn't all that surprised to see that Ayaka was holding a struggling Chisame down on top of her, Chisame's back to her front, while Asuna was leaning over her and fiddling with Chisame's nipples as she brought their faces together. From the looks of things, it seemed like they were talking, but they were too far away and there was way too much noise for Yuna to hear whatever it was. It probably wasn't all that important, clearly, because Asuna broke off to go down on Chisame rather than continue with whatever it had been.

"Um, maybe you shouldn't judge her too harshly," Ako said faintly as she looked in a direction neither of them had yet gazed.

Following that perspective showed Natsumi and that Kotaro kid, sitting pretty closely together in the shallow end of the pool, looking a bit scared as they watched Mana and Kaede grappling with each other ferociously. But that line of sight went past them, to alert them to the fact that Negi was presently having sex with -

"Ah, so good!" Fuuka cried as she ground her vulva against Fumika's face while Negi took her twin from behind, pumping firmly against her buttocks. "So good, Negi-kun! You're making sweet little sister even sweeter today! Fuck her hard! But don't come in her, that's not allowed!"

"Hmmmm!" Fumika made a sound of vague protest, her lips and tongue being restricted from talking.

"See, she agrees with me!"

"NNNNNN!" Fumika cried.

From the look of deep focus on his face, Negi wasn't really paying attention to this byplay. But perhaps he actually was more attentive to Fumika's somewhat incoherently expressed wishes than he appeared to be, because a moment later, he gasped and let loose with an ejaculation right up Fumika's vulva.

"AGGGH!" Fuuka shrieked. "Negi-kuuuun! We're twins, so how come only Fumika gets your sweet load!"

With a grunt, Fumika pulled her face free of her sister's netherparts. "Because you're a jerk and a hooligan and a bad boyfriend and nearly smothered me and -" She likely would have continued this litany of Fuuka's personal failings for quite some time had said malefactor not grown weary of listening to her and yanked her mouth up to start kissing her quite passionately, interrupting it.

"Fuuka and Fumika?" Yuna asked, eyes wide. "What the hell are they even doing here?"

"This one brought them, obviously," Kaede yelled back at them before Mana forced her mouth down to her cunt again.

"I don't believe this shit," Nodoka announced as she unhesitatingly undid the belt of her robe and let it fall to the ground a mere moment before she dashed across the bathroom floor to where Negi was lying back, small erection still waving in the air! "Negi-kuuun!" she cried as she drew near him. "I thought you were going to wait until I graduated!"

"Eh?" Negi said, as he realized who was running up to him and dropping onto him, hand wrapping firmly onto his erection. "But, but Nodoka-san, you said you -"

"Never mind what I said!" Nodoka cried as she began pumping him back to full hardness. "Just focus on what I say!"

At the best of times, Negi could never have hoped to follow that. These were not such times.

"Nodoka!" Yue gasped as she watched this. What about competing fairly? What about the two of them? What about -

And then Collet was growling softly as she jumped on her, brought her to the ground and began pulling her robe open. "So mean, to look away from me like that!" the beast-girl said poutingly as she brought her lips down to Yue's tiny breasts.

"I, I don't think this is -" Ako started to say.

But Akira didn't appear to be listening as she, too, dropped her robe and walked slowly and purposefully over to where Nodoka was energetically (if not all that skillfully) fellating Negi and dropped down beside him to press up against his body. "Master," she murmured as she kissed him again.

"- this isn't - " Ako continued to say.

"Shhh," Yuna interrupted as she turned to her and took her in her arms. "It's okay, Ako, no one's going to make you do anything you don't want to do ..."

"But I'm a contagious slut and so I'll make people do things they wouldn't do and -" Ako's self-accusation abruptly cut off as she felt her robe being taken off from behind.

From behind.

Her scar.

"Noo!" she sobbed.

"It's okay, Ako-chan," Konoka said right into her ear as she ran her fingers down the scar. "It's pretty. I think it's very pretty. My daddy has much worse scars, and they're very pretty, just like this one ..."

Ako collapsed back into Konoka's arms as they tumbled to the floor. of the bathroom, with Yuna following them quickly down.

* * *

Much later, after the party had settled down to sleep for a while, Negi found himself lying on top of Akira, using her breasts as pillows. She said not a word of objection to this, and was completely oblvious to the rather hostile looks she was getting from Chisame, Nodoka and Ayaka. (To balance things out, Negi was far too tired to notice the moderately hostile look he was getting from Ako.)

"I can't help but think that I've forgotten something," Negi mused wearily, just on the verge of falling asleep. "Something kind of important."

"It will wait until tomorrow, Master," Akira assured him, petting his hair gently.

"Prob'ly," he agreed, and within moments, only the soft sounds of sleep were coming from him.

"... that 'Master' stuff is really starting to creep me out'," Kotaro muttered to Natsumi as they watched this from a short distance away.

"All of this creeps me out," she told him. "I wish we hadn't let Arika-sama talk us out of going back to Chizu-ne's room."

"Does that mean you want me to stop?" he asked as he paused in his foot massage.

"No, of course not."

* * *

Several hours later, as Nekane Springfield watched as the rather bulky gentleman in the uniform collected her bags from the carousel. She'd found him waiting for her holding a sign with her name on it when she'd emerged from the arrivals gate. Though he hadn't said so, or actually much of anything, she suspected that he must be an employee of Ayaka's company, sent here to help bring her to the school. It was nice, but she would honestly have preferred a more personal touch.

What she would have preferred, of course, would fill several volumes. And so she endured this with grace and dignity, following along behind the man with her bags until they reached the limousine parked at the airport's front door. After putting her bags into the car's boot, he silently opened the door for her. She thanked him again and bent down to step into the car.

"Hello, Nekane Springfield," said Arika Anarcha Entheofushia, seated in the rear compartment, wearing a long black dress even more severe than Nekane's preferred garb, and holding the leash of a collar wrapped around the neck of a young, blonde girl with glasses, dressed in far more elaborate and frilly clothes, who was seated on the car's floor, staring off into the distance. The fallen queen's tone sounded much like someone informing someone else that they were already dead.

Nekane froze.

"Get in," Arika said. "That was not a request."

Slowly, Nekane did just that, sliding in and onto the seat, while at the same time trying to keep as much distance between herself and the obviously infuriated queen as possible. She knew that her doom was upon her, and yet still she hoped -

"Where is my son?" Arika asked.

Hope died completely. "I, I am truly sorry," she said. For she was. "There was an accident. Shortly after you and Nagi left, there was an accident, and -"

"Are you telling me that my son is dead?" Arika asked. "And that you raised yours in his place? Why? Why did you do such a thing?" Her voice wasn't raised, and her face seemed set in iron for all that it moved. But if a scream could be said to have a shape, then one would have been plainly visible in her eyes.

"The village worshipped Nagi," Nekane tried to explain. "I knew that I would need all the help that I could to ... so I let them think that my baby was gone, and that Nagi's son needed our help. And -"

"And of course," Arika interrupted. "You could not tell them that your son was Nagi's son as well. Too many suspected that you were his child, and not Seoman's. They would have been revolted."

She seemed to have calmed measurably, and Nekane began to hope again.

"You betrayed us, didn't you. To have more time to practice this deception," Arika said, killing that newborn hope.

"Yes," Nekane whimpered.

"My child is dead. My husband missing. All because of you. What should I do to you?"

"I, I, I won't fight you ..." Nekane said through sobs of terror. "If you want to kill me -"

"Kill you?" the queen said, with the air of one genuinely baffled. As though this was a concept she had never even considered. "Kill one of the children of my beloved? I could never do such a thing. Why, did I not imprison, rather than execute, my own father for his many crimes against our people and against me personally? Am I not merciful?" she asked, through clenched teeth. Pulling on the leash, she repeated herself. "Am I not merciful, Tsukuyomi?"

"You are the very soul of mercy, Arika-sama," the girl answered without ever ceasing her thousand yard stare out the window.

"Indeed. I will not kill you. The punishment for the lies you have practiced is to go on living them, to watch as your son grows up and never knows you as his mother, to see him have children of his own who will never call you grandmother. And there will be many of them, that I promise you."

Only now did Arika lift a hand to gently reach out and touch the stream of tears flowing from one of Nekane's eyes, before pulling her finger back and bringing it to her mouth to taste it. "Ahhh," she said, savoring it. "But as I am merciful, I will not wholely deprive you of the joys of motherhood. Rather, I will see to it that you have a new son to replace him who I am taking from you."

And now she was smiling, and Nekane cursed the very notion of hope as a cheat and a lie as the smile gave her completely to despair. "Indeed," said Arika. "You will know the joy that I never will ... knowing that your own son has given you a child."

Nekane began to scream, but it never went beyond an inhalation of breath before Arika was on her, and whatever she did sent her spiralling down into unconsciousness.

"Now, Kotaro-kun," Kaede asked patiently. "Do you not trust Natsumi-chan?"

"Of course I do, but -" the wolfboy said as he struggled vainly beneath her. He could have broken free of her embrace - probably - but not without hurting her. And despite everything, he still didn't want to hurt her.

"Then you should trust that even after this, she will still come back to you," Kaede continued as though he hadn't said anything like 'but', all the while gently sliding her vulva up and down alongside his erect penis. "You trust her, and she trusts you, and all manner of things will be well. Or do you not trust me?" She paused, eyes half-opened, to look down at him.

"No, no, I trust you," the flustered boy answered.

"Goooood," she cooed - then jerked her hips so that the tip of his penis was against the mouth of her vulva, and slid down once more to take him inside. "And admit it, you've dreamed of this from time to time. Knowing the embrace of another warrior."

He had, though admittedly, Kaede had not been the other warrior in question. But he carefully drew his thoughts away from that, just as he drew his eyes away from the sight on the other side of the room that he could just about glimpse - the sight of Negi and Natsumi together.

"Oh god, oh god, oh god," Natsumi kept saying as Negi pumped away between her legs.

Yue, seated nearby and watching as she rested from her last encounter, trying not to listen to Nodoka and Collet discuss their arrangement of her life - in which she was not being consulted even slightly - watched Natsumi with a bit of envy. The other girl hadn't really wanted to do this, but she'd been seduced into it by Ayaka's kisses and promises that 'Chizu-ne' would not be upset by all of this. Despite her hesitation, though, and despite what she was saying even now, it was clear to Yue that Natsumi was actually enjoying this.

She was, after all, the most quietly observant of all the girls, and she'd seen enough of them brought to orgasm over the last ... oh, how many hours had it even been? They'd slept through part of it, but irregularly. In any event, she'd seen enough girls really enjoying sex with Negi to know what one of them looked like.

And to recognize the complete absence of those signs in herself.

It wasn't that she didn't love him. She did. But it was an intellectual passion, not something of the emotions or physical desires. Only other girls provoked those sorts of things in her. And so she'd had to fake it when he'd dumped a load of his semen into her, because she'd honestly felt nothing other than wetness and embarassment. But he hadn't known.

She was sure that he hadn't known.

The door to the bathhouse began to slide open, and Yue felt herself freeze in momentary panic. Had the forbiddance failed? Were they about to be discovered? What to do what to do -

And then Arika came in, smiling brightly in the same bathrobe as she'd been wearing yesterday, and slid the door shut behind her. "I see that our revels yet continue," she said. "I just refreshed the wards, incidentally."

Despite embarassment, Yue couldn't help but feel a fair bit of gratitude for the older woman as she casually walked over to where Negi was just finishing up with Natsumi, to the other girl's evident satisfaction. "And I see you've been busy, Negi," Arika said. "All of them?"

"Ah, well, yes," he admitted, a bit shamefacedly. "Not, not all at once, but -"

"Well done," she interrupted with a compliment. "And as a reward, I have a special treat just for you. Two of them, actually."

"Just for me?" Negi asked. "What is it -"

"Come and see," she said, pausing just long enough to kiss Natsumi on the forehead before standing and offering him a hand. After a moment, Negi rose up to join her, with a brief glance over at where Asuna and Mana were grappling, with Tatsumiya in full demon mode and yet still pressed down as Asuna ground their crotches together.

"It's just for you," Arika repeated. "Well, Setsuna might enjoy part of it as well, but she seems preoccupied," she added with a look at where Setsuna, tied up with ropes that the Narutakis had provided, was being sexually tortured by Ayaka and Konoka, with the class representative enjoying the opportunity to show Konoka some things she'd learned from Chizuru.

"Okay," Negi said as he followed her out into the hallway. "Shouldn't I get -"

"It'll save time later if you don't."

Matters were proceeding well, Arika decided as she led Negi down the corridor, with the boy trying very hard to hide in her profile when there was a chance that he might be seen. She would probably have enjoyed his shyness a bit more if he'd been her son in truth, but it was not unamusing regardless. Likewise, she might have wished that she'd had time to confirm that the seeds she'd 'seen' planted in Natsumi had been laid there by him, rather than the dog-boy who was apparently her swain. But she supposed that she would find out the truth of that soon enough.  
_  
And if by chance the hanyou has planted or might yet plant seeds elsewhere among Negi's harem ... well. As I have lately been informed, anything can happen in a child's first year of life. All sorts of ..._ accidents _... can happen._

Not even Negi noticed the brief pause in her step as that thought crossed her mind.  
_  
No,_ her better nature asserted itself. _I must not allow my anger to lead me down that path. I am a better person than that. Perhaps not much of one, but that thing I will not do unless given no choice in the matter. Even if I do not believe that it was an accident. Even so._

She could tell that Negi was picking up on her mood from the way that he was looking at her, but they'd arrived at the dorm room before he could say anything. She smiled sincerely down at him as she opened the door and ushered him in, and this stopped him from addressing the point, both because he smiled back at her and because he was immediately distracted by what he saw within.

It took him a moment to recognize her without her glasses. "Tsukuyomi-san?" Negi asked, blinking, as he looked at the figure lying flat on her back on top of the kotatsu, her ankles and wrists fastened together with short chains. Consequently, her legs were pulled back and spread to expose her genitalia plainly to view.

"Ah, Negi-sama," she said in a flat tone as she managed to lift her head up and look around as though trying to place the source of his voice. "I have been waiting for you for so long now."

Negi blinked. _Sama?_ he thought. In utter silence, he turned to look up at Arika with a cutely bewildered expression.

"She is the first part of your gift, Negi," Arika confirmed.

"But, but I thought she was taken into custody after you disabled her," Negi said.

"She was, but, after her wounds were healed, I prevailed upon the authorities to surrender her into my care," Arika summarized. "And then I spent most of the night ... discussing matters with her. I believe that I have brought her around to our point of view. Haven't I, Tsukuyomi? She now speaks only when spoken to, incidentally," she added, softly.

"Yes, Arika-sama, I have completely abandoned my former attitudes," Tsukuyomi continued, still in that same flat, even tone. It was a bit like someone reading lines without putting any effort into making them convincing. "I now realize that I was foolish to try and compel you to become my mother, and that it would be a far more reasonable course of action to take such steps as will permit you to become my mother-in-law."

"Uh ... wh-why did you do this?" Negi asked Arika.

"Well, I don't particularly want to kill her, and I can't have her coming after my children at some point in the future, so the only course of action which seemed sensible was to make her into an ally," Arika explained. "And she is not without a certain appeal, after all." She pushed on Negi's shoulders. "Go on, then."

"Uhhhh," Negi temporized. "I'm not really ... um, Tsukuyomi-san, do you really want this? I thought -"

"I burn for your touch, Negi-sama. Please fuck me like I deserve to be fucked."

Was he imagining it, or was there actually a bit of genuine emotion peeking through her dull recital that time? No, he couldn't be imagining it. And his mother was right, it was always better to make former foes into friends. Like with Kotaro, or even ... well, it was too much to think of Fate like that. This was just a different form of friendship than that, and he was honestly getting used to it. And, after all, his mother was also right that she had a certain appeal, much like a combination of Ayaka and Setsuna. And that thought aroused him, honestly, as did her words.

Without further ado, he stepped up between her spread legs and began rutting into her. Her stoicism lasted only a few moments before she was crying out in what he decided to interpret as pleasure.

Arika watched them with pride, and with the occasional glance over towards the closet, where the second part of Negi's gift was bound and gagged and being made to watch all this. She hoped that Nekane liked the show.

All right, that was a lie. But she was allowed a lie or two to herself.

Arika Godel (and wasn't it a scream how just talking to her father for a few minutes, a few days before, had her thinking of herself by that name for the first time since she'd left home, three years and a thousand corpses ago?) was miserable. It wasn't anything that the boy was doing to her. He was, she supposed, a fairly skilled practitioner of these arts.

Not that she had much basis for comparison. Aside from daddy, there'd only been one or two others in her life. They - if it had been two and not one; she wasn't sure, since her memories of everyone she'd ever met tended to blur together in a faceless bloody mass - had been unscrupulous blademasters who'd made her participation in this sort of thing a part of her tuition fee. She'd acquiesced since she hadn't had other options. Oh, she supposed that there'd been other, more honest teachers who would have given her the training she wanted in exchange for - ugh - hard work. But really, who would ever choose hard work when there were other options available?

Had anyone ever said to her, "Cheaters never prosper", Tsukuyomi would have cheerfully answered back, "For if they do prosper, none dare call them cheaters." Right before she killed whoever had dared to talk to her like that. Educated, but fairly straightforward. That was how Arika Godel liked to think of herself.

Honestly, the number of people who'd talked to her whom she _hadn't_ killed could probably be counted on both hands and maybe one of her feet. One of them was busily pounding away at her vulva, and really, she'd have been fairly happy with this situation if she'd only been able to maintain some sort of illusion about it. Like that she was really just playing along with all this while she schemed a way to (a) get her beautiful wonderful singing-to-her-in-her-head sword back from wherever it was being held and (b) escape and fulfill her contract on awful-lousy-princess-who-fucked-sempai-right-in-fr ont-of-me and (c.i.) get away _or_ ( ) take vast numbers of would-be-avengers with her in a failed attempt to get away. Or something of that nature.

But the truth was very different. And though Tsukuyomi had no particular regard for the truth, or much of anything, really, she did have to accept the facts of her condition. She had been healed of the wounds that Mommy-who-she-should-really-start-thinking-of-as-A rika-sama had inflicted on her while she was demonstrating how fiercely she could love. (And wow, could she be fierce! It had been great!) The problem was, a wound by definition was a puncture in the epidermis, and what had been done to her had gone much deeper than that.

The chains that were holding her legs in position, so that um-whatsisname-ah-right-his-name-is-Negi could slam into her, were more for her own benefit than for anyone else's protection. Her muscle was damaged. It would heal and it could be trained to obey her will once more, but the healer who had taken care of her injuries had only closed her wounds so she wouldn't bleed to death. As these things go, he hadn't been even close to being a healer as good as she needed.

She supposed that was to be expected, but she couldn't help but feel a bit wistful for the time when her sempai's precious ojousama had healed her, after her last duel with sempai. That had been so much better than this. Admittedly, she'd been unconscious and by the time she'd regained self-awareness, she'd been dogpiled by Mesembrian soldiers so that she couldn't properly thank her sempai's precious ojousama by cutting her throat and laughing as the blood sprayed into her own face. That would have made it so much better than anything.

But there was no point in pleasant reminiscences or fantasies. Even if she was unbound, she wouldn't have been able to stand, much less fight. She couldn't fight. She couldn't fight. She couldn't fight. She couldn't fight.

Just like when Daddy had started, she couldn't fight.

"... am I hurting you?" Negi asked abruptly, pausing and breathing heavily as he stared at her tear-stained visage.

"No, Negi-sama," she said, lying, and she thought convincingly. "This is wonderful. You are the best lover I've ever had." Probably that was true. He actually seemed to be concerned for her pleasure, something none of the others had ever been. It sickened her, really; he ought to take what he wanted, as those with power always did.

"Okay," he said, relieved. "I'm just about done, and then ... I'm really happy you've seen reason, Tsukuyomi-san, and I'm sure that Setsuna will want to see you, and mmmmaybe she'll want to be with you this way, too. I think you might like that better."

... sempai? Seeing her like this? Seeing her so weak and helpless and unable to fight her forever like they both deserved? "NNNNNnnnaggghhh!" she cried as his caresses provoked a meaningless physiological response, tipping him over into spewing his boyjuice into her.

She was miserable.

And the worst part was, something told her that she was going to be miserable for a long while to come.

* * *

"Well done, Negi," Arika complimented him as he pulled back from the girl's bound form. "_Very_ well done." It was clear - to her, at least - that he'd broken her just a bit further.

"Ah, th-thank you," Negi said, reeling a bit. While he'd slept well last night, and slept in far later than he was normally prone to do this morning, he'd had a few encounters before this and was not really feeling at his best. "You said something about another reward, but, well, you know, I could certainly wait a while before -"

"Nonsense," she said primly, and produced a small tea set from behind her. "A few moments of rest should suffice to allow you to recover your stamina."

He did find it easy to relax once he'd had a cuppa, so he nodded politely and drank the tea. It was a surprisingly rich herbal blend that he didn't quite recognize. Quite tasty. Actuallly, very tasty. And ... he didn't feel tired anymore. Not at all. That was a bit strange actually. Tea was stimulating, but it shouldn't be this stimulating, should it?

Arika smiled as the last step of her plan was finally accomplished. With Negi dosed with herbal viagra, he was more than ready for the woman she'd kept bound and gagged in the closet with her eye up against the slightest crack in the doorway, one wide inenough for her to have been watching Negi's peformance with Tsukuyomi. And she, kept on the boil by a vibrator shoved into her and left on all this time, pumped full of an almost dangerous dose of fertility meds, was more than ready for him.

"Now, Negi -" Arika began to say.

"Why don't you call me 'my son', anymore?" he said, a bit plaintively.  
_  
Because you are not._ Since the truth would provoke more questions and probably confuse him, she promptly developed a truthful lie. "Lately, I have come to see that you are a man, more than a boy." She paused, looking down at his erection, which he wasn't bothering to hide. "And in light of our relationship, I have decided to treat you as a man, rather than simply assuming that because you are my son, you will do as I tell you."

"Oh," Negi said, starting to twitch a little. "That, yes, I suppose that makes sense. Um ... I'm not sure how to ask this, but was there -"

"Now for the surprise," she said, standing up to walk over to the closet door. "Negi, you have won the hearts of many young women here in Japan, and apparently elsewhere as well. But I wonder if you realize that there are those who have been attracted to you for much longer than that?"

"Eh?" he said, perhaps baffled by the change of subject.

She opened the door, and Nekane slid out and into sight. "Nnnggghhh," she said, from behind the gag.

"Nekane-neechan!" Negi gasped. "Oh, no! With all the excitement, I forgot she was - what, why is she -"

"Your cousin and I have had a nice long talk," Arika said, bending over to remove the gag, and the vibrator as well. "She has been hiding a deep passion for you for the longest time, under the guise of being your big sister. But even when I told her that she was free to act on such desires, she couldn't believe that you were truly mature enough to allow that. So I arranged things so that she would be offered incontrovertible evidence that you were. Isn't that nice of me?"

"Ahhhhh," Negi said, eyes wide, as he glanced from Tsukuyomi (who seemed entirely removed from these events) and Nekane, who was looking at him with eyes that he only call 'hungry'. "Is, is this true, neechan?"

This was the critical moment, Arika knew. If the foolish girl didn't follow the script, it would all fall to pieces, now. If they weren't both Nagi's children, she might have threatened either of them to get Nekane to do her bidding, but that wouldn't work. So now she had to wait.

"It's true," Nekane nearly whispered. "It's true," she said more loudly. "I love you, Negi. I always have, and I always will, no matter what. And if this ... this is what you like to do ... then I'll do it with you, Negi. Because I love you." Tears were flowing freely now. "Please come fuck me," she said to her son.

Negi murmured her name just once, and then stumbled over to her, bringing his erection to her lips so that she could begin sucking on him, moving back and forth, licking and laving his cock. It was of necessity a hands-free operation, but that in no way detracted from the sensation she made him feel.

He pulled back from her mouth, picked up her legs under his arms. "I love you too, big sister," he said in Welsh, and slammed into her.  
_  
Ah, I truly love family unity,_ thought Arika, as she began to stroll out of the room in search of more conquests.

The worst part of it was that she couldn't hold him, with her arms bound behind her as they were. As a consequence, she'd been transformed into nothing more than a vessel for Negi's lust, and he apparently saw nothing wrong with that. She thought that she'd raised him better than this. Apparently, a week or so with Arika-sama was enough to undo ten years with her. Perhaps, on consideration, that was the worst part of it.

No, the worst part had to be the fact that she was, against her will, enjoying it. She'd never wanted this. Sometimes, though, she'd found herself fantasizing about boys and girls around Negi's age, like Anya, and wondering what it would be like. She'd never indulged in such fantasies, of course, and she knew why. She'd wanted to be the good, pure older sister for Negi's sake, even though she was not good, not pure, and not his sister.

Was the failure of all her hopes for him the worst part, then?

She felt a sudden wave of disgust with herself as she realized that she was wondering whether or not the worst part of it was that she might have to tell Negi that he didn't really measure up to his father in this department. And the sickest part of that had to be that Nagi hadn't even been trying, for he'd been half-asleep when she snuck into his room that night, wanting ...

She wasn't sure what she'd been wanting, anymore. Was it to give the hero who'd saved her a hero's reward? Was it to prove that she was a grown-up at her young age? Had she suspected that he was her true father and been driven by Electral issues?

If the latter, then they'd had that in common, for he'd groaned 'Mother' as he fucked her, or she fucked him, riding him as he lay there insensate despite the way that she'd sucked his member, so much bigger than the tiny one that Negi now wielded, to hardness. She did look like pictures of her grandmother. His confusion had been understandable.  
She wondered if he'd thought it was just a dream. He'd looked at her oddly at breakfast the next day, but never said anything, even when he came back with his wife and saw that she was with child too. He was able to count. She assumed so at any rate. He should have known.

He should have known!

But if he had, he hadn't cared, and maybe that was the worst part of it all.

"Ahh," Negi said, as he began to twitch while still pumping away at her.  
_  
Wait, no, why iis he -_

He gasped as he climaxed, driving sperm up the channel from whence he'd been born.  
_  
- why, why, why is he finished before me? When do I get to -_

No. That was definitely the worst part of it all.

And then the door to the room was abruptly flung open.

Pleased with herself, Arika strolled down the hallway. She was aware, and amusedly so, that she was retracing the steps her daughter had walked less than a week ago, the ones that had ultimately led her to reveal all to Saotome Haruna. And she did glance at that door speculatively. It would be interesting to take the girl as a lover, despite Haruna's obvious fear of the notion. There had never been anyone that she couldn't seduce, given the opportunity.

But that was not what she was there to do. Instead, she politely knocked on the door beside Haruna's. It opened up and Chizuru stepped into view, wearing a robe and slippers much like Arika's own. The girl blinked in surprise at the sight of Arika. "Oh. Good afternoon," she said, without much warmth in her tone.

"Good day," Arika replied, ignoring the tone. "How is your hand?"

Reflexively, Chizuru looked down at the cast before answering. "It still hurts, from time to time, but I imagine that means that the bones are knitting back together." She coughed, then looked up, but not at Arika directly. "Since Natsumi-chan and Kotaro-kun didn't come home last night, should I conclude that you've brought them under your sway?"

"I wouldn't put it like that," Arika said, taking no offense. Yet. "But they have joined the celebration that the others are having. They looked to be enjoying themselves when last I saw them. As was Ayaka."

Chizuru sighed. "I see. I suppose that I should be happy for them."

Arika almost shook her head in dismay. "You realize that you are also welcome to -"

"I decline to do so," Chizuru interrupted firmly. "What you are doing is wrong." Her voice was quiet, but incredibly firm.

Arika blinked. "I see. I won't thank you for that unsolicited opinion, but I suppose you've a right to it. Tell me, please, is it right for a fifteen year old woman to seduce a twelve year old girl?" There was just a bit of an edge in her tone.

To her surprise, Chizuru didn't visibly react to the salvo. "No, it is not," she admitted. "In retrospect, I should have waited until she was more mature. But whatever I've done does not change the fact that what you are doing is wrong."

Now Arika felt herself getting a bit angry. "Indeed. Who says so?"

"I do. I say so. I may not be able to stop you personally, and I might not be in any position to get other people to do it, but I can choose my own actions, and I choose not to be involved in your activities. Because what you are doing is wrong."

"You keep repeating that. It does not become more charming with repetition," Arika snapped. "Why is it wrong?"

"Why is it right?" Chizuru replied automatically.

Arika blinked. "How can something that brings happiness to so many be wrong?" she asked.

"Many things bring momentary happiness but subsequent misery," Chizuru answered smoothly. Her face had remained calm all this while, and her tone betrayed no stress whatsoever. "Should any of Negi's romantic partners find themselves with an unwanted pregnancy, that would be an example of a lasting misery."

"Children are always a delight," Arika objected.

"It's convenient for you, then, that someone else raised yours."

To Arika, the world went red. "That," she said in a quiet and patient tone, "was not a wise or safe thing to say to me."

The girl, perhaps perceiving a minuscule amount of the danger into which her words had placed herself, side-stepped out of the doorway, moving fully into the hallway to give herself more room to maneuver. "And so, now that trickery and persuasion have failed to get what you want, you move to threats and violence," she snapped. "How typical of the rich and the powerful."

"Rich?" Arika hissed. "I own not even the clothes on my back, you foolish child. And power? Oh, I have that. Faint good it did me, when my child died while I was -" She choked back the tears that she had never allowed herself to shed, even in private. She would not grant this ignorant little girl the privilege of seeing them. No one, save Nagi, would ever have that of her, whatever else they had.

Chizuru, meanwhile, was torn between the impulse to come forward and comfort the woman, despite their differences, and the much more primal impulse to step back, away from the woman who seemed both mad-as-in-angry and mad-as-in-insane. That impulse won out. "What in the world are you talking about?" she said, stepping back again. "Negi-kun is -" She realized that she was bumping into someone, and reflexively turned to see who it was.

"Hi," said the naked Negi in a strange voice ... and then his features began to melt. Before either Arika or Chizuru could react, the slime that had taken Negi's form expanded to cover the younger woman.

"What?" Arika snapped.

A second slime appeared behind the one engulfing Chizuru, this one resembling a little girl with twin-tails. "Hiya!" she said cheerfully. "Our boss, your dad, says to tell you that if you want this one back, come alone to the World Tree. Seeya!"

"Wait, no -" she shouted, but they were already gone.

Arika cursed in a way that would have made strong men shudder, then turned and unhesitantly kicked open the door to Haruna's room.

"Avaunt, Saotome!" she shouted. "I need your aid!"

In Japan, one generally did not expect to have one's door kicked in and a crazy woman appear demanding that one "avaunt." (Haruna wasn't exactly sure what word meant, actually.) And though this was not the first time that the door-kicking-in part had happened to her, the avaunt-demanding thing, and more particularly who was making it, was not really conducive to her sangfroid.

"GYAH!" she said from where she was sitting on the couch watching cartoons she'd recorded last night, hands up in a position that she'd learned from watching her older brother. "What -"

"I told you already!" Arika yelled. "I need your help!"

"You need help in general, and I'm not really qualified to -"

"Enough! My father is still among the living and has begun his scheme. I must go to answer it alone or a more-or-less innocent person will suffer an unjust fate!"

"More-or-less -"

"Never mind! I need you to go and gather Negi and the others and warn them about this!"

"Why can't you -"

"Because they would insist on coming with me to the library and I must go alone! Please, Saotome! What is or is not between us does not matter now!" And with that, the former queen dashed off without another word.

Haruna stared at the void in space she'd formerly occupied for a few moments. "Despite everything," she muttered. "Despite everything, she trusts me. Aw, hell. Life would be so much easier if I didn't have a conscience." With that, she got up and ran out into the hallway.

A moment later, she was throwing the door to Negi's room open and shouting, "Hey, Negi-kun, there's an oh god please put some clothes on!"

"Ahh!" he shouted, covering himself. "Ha-ha-haruna-san?"

She stared in mute horror at the bound form he was bent over. _I used to draw stuff like this,_ she thought faintly. _I used to -_ "That's, that's your cousin," she said, just as faintly.

"Ah, yes - um, is something the matter?" he asked.

She stared at him, head slightly tilted. "Yeah, I should say so," she said. Then with a quick shake of her head, she continued. "But yes, yes there is, and you need to get dressed, and untie her - actually untie both of them," she said, until she abruptly recognized the other woman lying bound in the corner. "Uh, okay, actually, only your cousin, only untie her."

Tsukuyomi's eyes swung dazedly in her direction, and Haruna found herself flinching at her regard.

Negi quickly did that. "What's wrong?" he asked while doing so. "I mean, other than -"

"Apparently, we didn't kill the bad guy enough yesterday, because he's back and your mom went somewhere other than the library to fight him. Alone."

"Mother?" he sqwawked. "Wait, what do you mean other than -"

"Well, obviously, she wouldn't have told me she was going to the library unless she wanted me to tell you she was going to the library so you wouldn't be able to follow her, so wherever she's going, it's not there!"

Negi stared. "Run that by me one more time?"

"I'm gonna have to do it to the rest of the gang later so let's save it for then!" Haruna almost shrieked, at that moment wanting nothing more than to get out of this den that stank of sex as fast as she possibly could. "Where are they?"

"Bath house," he told her as he pulled on pants, not bothering with a shirt. "Neech- Nekane, I'm going to have to go now, so you just wait here and everything will be fine, okay?"

"... okay," Nekane mumbled, still staring up at the ceilling.

"Oh, and Tsukuyomi-san, um ... I gotta go. Bye!" He actually waved before he dashed out beside Haruna.

"What a sweet boy," Tsukuyomi said. "You don't meet boys like that everywhere. Well, maybe there'll be more of them in the future."

Nekane shuddered at that thought as she got up and pulled on some clothes. She didn't respond as she started to stumble out of the room.

Moments later, it was silent except for Tsukuyomi's breathing.

And a tiny voice, murmuring, "Interesting," as a third slime girl moved past the open door.

* * *

"Well done, Purin," Alladia said to the slime sister as he examined the still slumbering form of Chizuru Naba. "It was a good idea to release you and your sisters. You have given excellent service."

The girl continued to demonstrate her qualifications by not speaking. He despised minions who did nothing but talk, talk, talk. That was his job, while theirs was to listen and obey. Her sisters were not quite so capable, but remained useful. Speaking of usefulness, he frowned as he considered Chizuru.

"Her arm was like that when you found her?" he asked abruptly.

The slime girl nodded.

"Hm. Well, that won't do. She should be in ideal form to be offered as a sacrifice, along with the maiden and the ... crone," he said, abruptly becoming aware that there was a problem with that formula, one that he couldn't quite put his finger on at the moment. Something was off. But what?

Ah well, it was probably nothing too important, or he'd have taken care of it before now. With that self-reassuring thought, he cast a simple healing spell that finished repairing the fractures in the girl's hand and arm. If she'd been awake, it would probably have been very painful for her. As it was, she groaned in the enforced sleep. As he was neither sadistic nor empathetic, he regarded her pain as mere data, nothing more.

"That should be better," he mused, as he hefted her sleepiig body and set it against the cruciform restraints on the wall. Understandably, this put her body in close proximity to his own. If matters weren't so pressing, he would have sampled his younger daughter's charms to see how they compared to the girl he'd taken all those years before. Actually, matters weren't that pressing, were they?

Purin quietly coughed, to draw his attention to her, and then the monitor which displayed the roots of the World Tree, where his eldest daughter had just arrived.

"It seems they are, after all. Ah well." Alladia stepped back from Chizuru and began chanting. The words grew as they called the attention of powers that lightly slumbered at the best of times, and focused them on the here and now.

* * *

Evangeline, brooding in her resort, realized what was happening immediately, and had most of a subjective hour to prepare a response. Unfortunately, she wasted quite a bit of that hour shouting abuse at whoever was doing this. That still left most of what remained for her to try to reinforce the resort's barriers to resist the spell. Given just a little more time, or some help, she probably would have succeeded.

But she was alone.

Three minutes after Alladia began to cast his spell, Evangeline's cottage ceased to exist. Her resort exploded forth from the container in its basement and burst through the building's walls as it expanded to its actual size, crushing much of the forest around the location of the cabin as well. The small sea at the base of resort also swept out to drown much of the area as well.

Last but not least, two minutes after the spell finished, the bridge between the two towers of the resort complex, architecturally unfeasible in a less magically rich environment, collapsed to the ground below. Then, and only then, did silence reign over the remnants of the forested area.

Nor was this the only demiplane whose contents spilled out on the region of Mahora. Most were simply places of storage. Library Island contained far more books than even its awesome shelving could hold, and so the magicians had placed less frequently used volumes in places reserved for such rarely-used books. Now they all exploded forth, spewing those books out into the library proper as they broke down the walls and floors where they were hidden away.

All across Mahora, the demiplanes expanded, wrecking the buildings that contained them. Mayhem ensued, the lines of power around the city were altered by the changes to its structure, and a certain barrier, limiting the powers of a certain shinso vampire even further than the Infernun Scholasticus curse did, ceased to do so.

But there was one demiplane not hidden by the Mahora mage order. A great dark tower that exploded forth from the grounds of the academy, rearing up to challenge the World Tree itself, announcing that a new power had come into the world.

Arika, almost knocked off her feet by the tower's rising from the ground, watched it in horror. "But why did he tell me to come here if -"

At that point, the mercenaries he'd hired and equipped with cloaking devices shot her in the back with several stun bolts.

Moments later, a teleportation sutra attached to her forehead, Arika's unconscious body appeared on the floor of Allaidia's control room. "Your swain was always better at dealing with surprises than you, my dear," he said as he bent to pick her up and set her on the wall as well.

If the temptation to sample Chizuru had been strong, that he faced this time was almost overpowering. He struggled against the urge to claim her once more, to remind her that he would always have that power over her, as she admitted but did not truly accept. But if there had been little time before, there was even less now that he had begun his play - far too little for such pleasures.

Not without regret, he hung her on the mounting, then quickly stepped back to take his chair and swivel it away from them as they began to come around. After a minute or so, the chair swivelled around to face them, revealing the face that Chizuru recognized as the retired master of the Yukihiro Financial Group - although until this moment, she had never seen him without his glasses, or realized that his eyes were two different colors.

"Greetings," he said cloyingly.

"That would have been far more dramatic if you hadn't had your agent tell me that you were behind all this," Arika said wearily.

Inwardly, he snarled at her insolence, though not a trace of that showed on his face.

"I suppose that I should introduce you. It's the polite thing to do," Arika continued. "Chizuru-san, this is ... well, a person who believes himself to be my father, Alladia Autarkia -"

"I am him," the man said, anger clear in his tone as his gaze snapped up to take them both in. "You do not face any homonculous this time, my dear."

"So you say."

"So I do."

* * *

In fact, a homonculous, one with a specifically limited set of memories, was precisely what they were facing. The original body (and soul) of Alladia Autarkia Vespertatia was some distance away, considering what Ameko, the noisiest and least effective of his trio of slime servants, had to show him.

"I followed her from the dorms," the slime girl explained as she stood over the unconscious body of the woman in the bathrobe. "There was something really strange about all that stuff, and I couldn't see why the bint you had us watching -"

"Ahem."

"- your eldest daughter, I mean, sent someone else to alert the brat instead of warning him herself. And then I found them doing stuff."

"I see," said Alladia, leaning close to Nekane's slumbering face, remembering a girl long dead as he gently caressed the line of her chinbone. "Fascinating."

He straightened, and looked towards the black tower with an expression best categorized as smug. "You may have somehow foiled my first plan, eldest daughter, but what you've done since has given me an opportunity beyond any that I'd imagined. Your death will be lingering and painful, but have my thanks nonetheless."

With that, he bent down once more and pressed his hand to Nekane's lower abdomen, chanting softly in a language as ancient as the Sphinx. Glowing ensued, and then he pulled his hand back. "I win," he declared. "Let us be off, Ameko."

"Just like that?"

"Just. Like. That."

A moment later, Nekane roused herself. She must have passed out, from the fatigue and ... from the fatigue. There wasn't much further for her to go, though. She was almost to the end of her journey.

* * *

_Minutes later, this happened._

Evangeline's eyes stayed closed for a few more moments, before she heard a footstep nearby. She opened them and became wary once more. There was something familiar about the blonde woman in the disheveled dress who was approaching her, but she couldn't quite - and then she did place her. "Nekane Springfield," she said.

"You are Evangeline ... aren't you?" she asked, her voice as unsteady as her tread. "Negi told me about ... please, you have to help him."

"I've sent the best part of me to do just that," Evangeline replied. "I don't have to do anything more."

"I kind of object to that description," Chachazero noted, but no one was paying attention.

"No, no, I know, I heard stories about you, you're the Mage of the Evil Sound, you can do things -"

"Right now, I'm a moderately powerful vampire who doesn't have to hide in the darkness and isn't bothered by holy symbols, and that's about it," Evangeline snapped. "Even if I wanted to help him, which I don't, I couldn't do a blessed thing -"

"Please!" Nekane cried out. "You have to save my son!"

Evangeline snorted. "Am I supposed to care that you raised him because his mother got kidnapped and -"

"No! _I_ bore him!" Nekane shrieked.

Few things in this world could truly surprise Evangeline. This managed it. All she could do for a second was stare at the English woman with an open mouth, before she finally hissed, "What?"

"I, I was young, a-and foolish, and I wanted to show my father how grown-up I was, and when Nagi came back to tell us he was going to be a father, I decided that this would be a good way to do it, and so I crept into his room, and, and I didn't know he'd slept with my mother, I didn't know he might be my, my, and I didn't know, and then I was pregnant, and he'd left, and I couldn't tell anyone who the father was, and they came back together, and she was so so much more perfect than I was, and I knew he'd never leave her for me ..."

She drew in a shuddering breath before continuing, slightly more calmly. "Our babies were born in the same week, hers just a few days before, and everyone thought it was funny how much they looked alike. And then they started to make plans, and they were going to leave Negi with me while they set things up to go to America, and I said I'd take care of him, and ... and I tried, I really did, but he wouldn't stop crying, and, and ..."

"What did you do?" Evangeline asked, appalled.

"It was an accident!" Nekane sobbed.

Chachazero might have made a comment at this point, but the horrified look on the Master's face kept her in check.

"So, you see, I, I had to betray them, I had to have time to set things up so that they wouldn't be able to tell the difference between the children, you see. I've paid!" She was sobbing, now. "I've paid for the crime, surely? I've never been able to tell him I'm his mother, I've only ever been the big sister, and surely that's payment, surely, and what I've done, what I've had to do -"

"I pity you," Evangeline interrupted. "I really do. I don't think I've ever met anyone as pathetic as you. But I can't do anything, I'm cursed -"

"I can break the curse," Nekane told her. "I have the Thousand Master's -"

"Stop it," Evangeline said as she started to get to her feet. "Don't, don't even - I'd have to drain all of your blood, you'd die, he'd never forgive me."

"I don't want to live like this! I'm all rotten inside, can't you see that? He, I, this can't go on!"

"Then tell him, or kill yourself, I don't care which! I don't kill women and children, I will not be a party to your suicide!"

And then, quite suddenly, just as Nekane prepared to rush Evangeline in a charge that would surely have accomplished nothing, a man was standing behind her, grabbing her in an elbow lock around the stomach that kept her still. "No, grandma," he said. "There's a better way."

Evangeline blinked as she took in the sight of this new arrival, and the staff that he was holding in his free hand, then gaped. "Nagi? But how -"

"No," he said. "Not quite."

"Let me go," Nekane wept. "Let me go!"

"Somnus imperius," the man said, directly into her ear. The girl's body stiffened, then went limp as her eyes rolled shut in sleep.

Setting her down, gently wiping some of the tears that stained her cheeks clear, he stood up to face Evangeline with a calm, even cold, look on his face. "I am Nara Springfield," he said. "Three-fold descendant of Nagi Springfield. I am no woman, and no child. I am the prey you seek." He pulled back the hood of his raggedy cloak, exposing his neck to her.

A few moments later, Evangeline felt his body fall away from her lips. Felt, rather than saw, for her eyes were far away. She felt his absence with her lips, and her tongue, as the taste of his blood ceased to register in her mouth.

It had been so long since she'd done this, she'd almost forgotten how it felt. Oh, not the drinking blood - she'd done that countless times. But drinking someone's life, down to the dregs? It had been ages since she'd had to do that. And she couldn't ever recall anyone ever voluntarily permitting her to do that. Sometimes, she'd convinced or cajoled people into lowering their defenses so that she could, but whenever they realized what she was actually doing, they fought for their lives. Usually to no avail, since by then they'd been weakened past the point when fighting meant anything. Never had someone calmly and without visible hesitation let her take his life, until now.

She supposed that made him some manner of saint.

She was inclined to despise saints on principle.

"Fool," she said quietly to the man who called himself Nara, as he lay before her, still vaguely clinging to life. "You are indeed his child, for you are the greatest fool I have ever met. Throwing away your life for - for - I don't even understand what you were trying to accomplish, here!" she finally wailed.

Incredibly, his jaw moved, and he managed, with what was left of his strength, to gasp out a single word. "Envy," he whispered. And then was still and cold and dead.

"That doesn't make any sense!" she protested reflexively. Then, shaking her head, she let glamour enshroud her in the form of an adult once more, and called up her cloak of bats to let her take flight.

Once she was gone, and Chachazero with her, a shadow detached itself from one of the trees knocked over by the tower's explosion onto this dimension, and flew over to the side of the corpse that lay before the stairwell. There, Kamiya paused a moment, allotted in the timeline of this mission, to mourn him, knowing that he was the only one in this time and place who would do so.

Long ago - very long ago, in his frame of reference - he had found himself thinking that a choice he would face would ultimately only impact the quality and nature of certain of his allies. At the time, he had not fully understood that. Now, looking back on the times when his life had crossed this man's - both in that lifetime and in the other one - he was no longer sure that was such a small and trivial thing. Comparing the roaring, laughing, joking Nara of that life with this one, who had only ever truly lived for this last moment ...

He would have wept, but ninjas could not do so.

Instead, he bent to kiss him, just once more, before picking up the Cassiopeia he carried in his shirt pocket and activating a device concealed on Nara's person that reduced the corpse to ashes, making him nothing more than dust in the wind.  
_  
As are we all,_ he reminded himself.

Then, without even a glance at the slumbering form of Nekane Springfield - who was not, after all, _his_ grandmother, or any kin to him - he rose, time alotted for mourning now elapsed, and darted off to continue his mission. He did find time to wish that Nara had been able to finish his last words to the Queen of Puppets, however, though he knew it was best that he had not.  
_  
Envy me._ A truly clever warning. A pity it was never spoken.

* * *

_Within less than ten minutes of that, this happened._

With a roar, a mass of pink light roughly the size of a small building slammed into the colossus' torso, essentially annhilating it. The arm that it had been swinging up towards the Chao Bao Zi started drop, narrowly sliding under the cable car instead of impacting it, before twisting like a helicopter rotor blade towards the ground. So too with its other arm, as well as the head formerly perched atop the torso. But there was enough time, barely, for those who had been attacking the monstrosity's legs to get out of the way of the falling body parts.

The head's eyes still glowed for a moment, and though its facial features were as immobile as rock, they nonetheless managed to convey a strange sort of amusement. Then the light went out forever.

"Incredible," Negi murmured from his position in the sky, turning to look up where his Master had cast down that awesome spell. He started to see that she was descending rapidly, and in an uncontrolled manner. His first impulse was to fly up and try to match her velocity so as to catch her.

"Negi," said Arika, behind him. "Negi, there's something -"

No, that wouldn't work; he had a passenger, and he couldn't very well ask his mother to get off. So there was only one real option, and he almost chuckled at the notion. The very spell he'd cast on his first day here, to slow Nodoka's fall. He began casting at once.

"Negi," Arika said forcefully. "There's something that you need to know before you -"

"Not now, Mother," he answered, just as forcefully.

He didn't see her face go white, as though she'd been slapped. He didn't see her eyes close, nor hear a sigh escape her lips. His focus was solely on the person he was trying to rescue.

And then it was done, and her fall was slowed. He had a few precious seconds to spend before going up to catch her, and chose to spend them by turning around to look at his mother contritely. "I apologize, mother, but the safety of my students, all of them, comes first. Now what's the matter?"

And then she told him.

* * *

Negi rode his wand down to the ruins of Evangeline's cabin, with the resort still standing there. At the bottom of the stairs, he found Nekane's slumbering form.

He hopped off of the flying staff before it had quite settled down, leaving his mother to drop the rest of the way, though she landed easily and caught the staff before it hit the ground. He paid her no mind as he ran up to the body, the neck in particular, before he let out a great sigh of relief.

"She's fine," he said, turning to look at Arika, who met his look of consternation with one of bewilderment. "Why did you say that? Why did you tell me that Master had done that to her?"

"I was sure that was what she meant," Arika answered, remembering her own fury at her thwarted vengeance. "She told me that she'd drained a member of the Springfield line, down to the last drop. And I could see you and your sisters, so I knew it wasn't any of you, and so ... Negi, I am sorry. I was wrong. But I don't see how -"

"Negi-sensei," said Chachamaru, from behind both of them.

Negi turned quickly, Arika somewhat more slowly. She was hovering just a bit above the ground, holding Evangeline's limp body in her arms.

"She won't wake up," Chachamaru said, her voice expressing less emotion than it had in the first days of their acquaintance. "I do not know what to do."

"Bring her here, and I'll see what I can do," he said, as calmly as he could under the circumstances. He paused to give Arika a look of more than a little mistrust, before heading over to where Chachamaru landed, her burden held out for him to take.

"She's so ... warm," was the first thing he said.

Arika looked up at the resort towering above her, and then turned to look back at the wreckage of Mahora, then at Nekane, sleeping peacefully. "What a mess," she said at last.

* * *

_At almost the same time, this happened._

Asuna stood on the plaza, sword planted tip-first into the ground and her mailed fists resting on its hilt, resting for a while and looking like some sort of warrior princess. (Which, you know, she was.) She was gazing at the wreckage of the statue, and feeling surprised at the sorrow she felt. As though she'd missed some chance that would never come again. But she forced that line of thought away from her. He was dead, and she was glad. She turned around to look up, and saw Chachamaru flying up into the air, and Negi speeding away on his broomstick. She wondered what the matter was, and got ready to run after him.

"Asuna."

She stopped, and turned to look at Takamichi, who'd come out of nowhere to stand behind her with a grim expression on his face.

"We need to talk," he said.

"Okay," Asuna replied, a moment later. He'd led her over to the foyer of one of the buildings around the boulevard. "So talk."

"Yesterday, you told me, in so many words, that you were having sex with Negi. Right?" the former teacher asked, his face eerily calm.

"Maybe I did, maybe I didn't. If you were planning on selling us out, then I definitely -"

"Asuna. You know me better than that," he interrupted.

"I thought I did," she said. "Can we get to the point? My little brother probably needs me."

Takamichi drew in a long breath. "If Negi is planning to continue as a teacher here at Mahora, then that can't continue. In the wake of my exposure, every teacher here will be under increased scrutiny. If they catch you, Negi will not only lose his job, but his hope of becoming one of the Magister Magi. It has to end."

Asuna blinked, then opened her mouth to try and say something. For a few moments, though, nothing came out. "Then we'll stop," she finally said, a faint note of hysteria in her tone. "It's just a few months until graduation, and then, then everything will be ..." She trailed off.

"You won't last a week," Takamichi said, not ungently. "And you'll get caught. And it will all go to dust."

"So what do I do?" she asked, angrily and desperately. "What should I do?"

"If you love something, set it free," he told her. "In your case, that means you need to walk away from all of this. With me, I hope."

She looked at him, confused.

"Yes," he said, answering her unasked question. "I've come to terms with it. You're not a virgin princess, and I'm not a prince on a white horse. I'm not even a very good knight. But I think that we can be good together, Asuna. Wherever you go, I hope you'll GGGHURK."

Asuna blinked. The interruption this time hadn't come from her forcibly planting a fist in his face, though she'd felt tempted to do so. Instead, it had been prompted by a little girl who'd dropped down from above them both to land squarely on Takamichi's head, knocking him down from sheer surprise if not from her mass. She guessed that she had to be about nine years old, with hair just a shade darker than Asuna's own, done up in a pair of braids that led up to buns on either side of her head.

"Dumpling head," Asuna heard herself saying, somewhat reflexively.

The little girl, who was rubbing her butt with an annoyed expression, looked up sharply. "Ahhh!" she expressed. "Mama! Only papa can call me that, I told you you're not allowed! Why do you do things that aren't allowed? Why? Why do you taunt me by doing things that aren't allowed?" She punctuated the question with an obvious pout.

Asuna's eyes probably could have been bigger. She wasn't sure how, but she thought they probably could. "Mama?" she repeated. "You're my - but how? I haven't - I mean ..."

"You haven't married papa yet, I know, that's why I came back! To figure out how you did it so that I can do it and get papa to marry me too!"

"... what," Asuna said.

"To figure out how you did it so that I can do it and get papa to marry me too!" Chibi-Asu repeated.

"That, that was a heretical question," Asuna explained, feeling faint. Seeing the question coming, she quickly added, "That means I didn't really expect an answer. Um ... but, but he's my teacher, so how can we -"

"Oh, that," Chibi-Asu said dismissively. "Grandma fixed that." Abruptly, she looked around in a panic. "She's not here, right now, is she? She gets mad when I call her that and not Arika-sama."

"Yeah, I can see how that would happen," Asuna said. "I'm gonna sit down, okay?"

"Okay," Chibi-Asu said agreeably. "Can we talk about how you got the Springfield Family jewels?"  


* * *

  
_A few hours later, this happened._

"Then you can't be sure what's wrong with her?" Negi asked the doctor, as politely as he could. It had been a few hours since the battle had come to an end, and he had had a chance to rest, but his repose had been less than easy due to his concern over Evangeline's welfare. He was worried about all of his students, of course, regardless of his personal relationship with them, but he'd heard from most of them so far and knew that they'd come through all right, miraculously as ever.

Actually, the only ones he hadn't heard from Ayaka (and by extension Chizuru) and Asuna. He knew that the first two were all right, since he'd seen them together after that awesome spell was cast. But he didn't know what had become of his best beloved, and the worry was starting to get to him. Still, he also knew that he had to keep his focus on his immediate concerns. Chiefly, Evangeline, who looked so small as she lay in the hospital bed, eyes closed and body limp.

Sagisawa Yohko shook her head. "This is all well outside my areas of expertise, and I'd never done more than a cursory examination of her before this. But from what's in the file, and from what I'm seeing ... she's basically a perfectly normal, healthy ten year old girl. And that's all - we do have tests that we can run on unconscious subjects to determine whether they're magically active, and she's not registering any of them. Whatever she did turned her into an ordinary girl, and there's no reason that she shouldn't be awake and fully conscious. No reason that I can detect, at least."

"I can," Nodoka said softly from the doorway to the room.

They both looked up at her. "There's something wrong mentally?" Negi asked, guessing part of where this was going.

Nodoka nodded as she walked into the room, standing at the foot of Evangeline's bed. "I don't ... I'm not sure if I can explain this very well, but ... basically, her self-awareness is drowning under the weight of six hundred years of memories. At any given moment, her mind is reliving things from decades or even centuries earlier, randomly. It's ... awful," she finally said, after searching for something stronger and finding nothing. "I think the only way she could have borne up under the weight of all those years was through the use of magic to structure her memories. If you take that away -"

"Then this happens," Negi finished for her, turning to look at Evangeline with a horrified expression. "I don't know nearly enough about psychic magic to be able to fix this. I'm not even sure where to start."

Nodoka cleared her throat. "I ... think I might be able to do something. But it'd be a, a very blunt treatment."

Sagisawa frowned. "I'm not sure I like the sound of this. What do you mean?"

Nodoka held up a small red gem. "At the very start of all of this, Evangeline gave me this. It contains a spell that would allow someone to selectively remove memories. I didn't end up using it on ... well, that doesn't matter now. The problem is, we'd probably have to take everything out, back to when she was last a normal mortal."

"If that's our only option, other than leaving her like this, then -" Negi began to say, looking very unhappy.

"There's actually another option," said an unfamiliar voice from the doorway.

Standing there was a tall and voluptuous woman, who looked so much like Evangeline's aged up form that Negi promptly did a double take to determine whether Evangeline was actually abed beside him. It was only on the second glance that he saw that her hair was light green, while her eyes were a reddish brown. Her bust, exposed by the haltertop that she wore beneath the long cape that trailed behind her, was substantial and why was he staring there? With difficulty, he jerked his eyes upward to see that she was meeting his gaze, looking at him with an amused and perhaps even hungry expression. Again, just like Evangeline.

"Who, who are you?" Nodoka asked.

"No one to be trifled with, Miyazaki Nodoka," the woman answered as she sauntered in as though she owned the place. "I will resolve this situation without recourse to your blunt instrument approach." Her voice, hard as a rock, grew quiet as she came closer to the bed. "It is the very least of what this woman is owed."

"Hold it, I don't know who you think you are, waltzing into a hospital to try out treatments, but -" Sagisawa began to object.

The woman stared at her, and her eyes glowed.

"- clearly it would be best for all parties to let you do just that," Sagisawa concluded, in a perfectly calm tone.  
"Sensei?" Negi asked, gaping.

This left an opening for the woman to reach out to touch Evangeline's head, and begin chanting in Greek. The whole room was filled with a bright glow like that in her eyes, earlier. "Psechike Anaseykrotese!" she concluded.

Evangeline screamed, her body convulsing just once.

"What did you do!" Negi demanded, angrily.

"As Miyazaki said, the Queen was only able to maintain her memories through magic," the woman said, drawing back. "I rebuilt her memory palace. It should last until she learns to do it for herself. Do not bother to thank me. And now I must go." This was said complete with a swirl of the cape, which seemed to shift as though it were made out of bats.

"Who are you?" Negi asked, now completely bewildered. "At least, tell me your name!"

The woman paused. "I have often wondered where it came from," she said after a moment of consideration. "So be it. I am Seraphine. Until we meet again." And then she was gone, as though turning herself into mist, with an explosion of bats.  


* * *

  
The mist (and bats) reformed atop the hospital roof, which was presently occupied by a woman in a long black coat and matching hat, who, save for her red hair, could have been Arika's twin. "All done?" she asked quietly.

"Nothing is ever truly done," the woman called Seraphine answered. "You of all people should know that, surely."  
"... it wasn't actually the ultimate question, Sera-chan," she replied.

"I. Hate it. When you call me that!" the green-haired woman hissed. "Dammit, Anarchia!"

With a sad little sigh, and a shake of her head, the red-haired woman held up a Cassiopeia. "Come on," she said. "Our Master awaits us."

"Bah." But she took her hand all the same.

And then they were gone.

* * *

Negi was distracted from his bewildered contemplation of what just happened by a quiet gasp from the bed. He turned just in time to see Evangeline's eyes quiver part of the way open. She regarded him in silence for a moment, before speaking in a weary tone that he almost didn't recognize. "Boya," she said. "What happened?"

"You did it," he told her. "You saved us all."

"... saved you from what?" she continued after a moment. "And why would I do something so stupid?"

"Don't you remember?" he asked impulsively, then cursed himself silently.

"I ..." Her eyes slammed shut again, and she grunted. "Everything is as clear as it ever is, up to the fifth of August. After that, it's all a blur." Her face twisted in annnoyance. "And there's this bloody thumping noise in my head that's playing all hell with my concentration."

The last two days were lost to her. Considering the alternatives, Negi thought that sounded pretty good. But now he had to tell her the rest of it. "Um ... I think that's your heartbeat."

Evangeline was perfectly still for a moment. She broke it with a sudden cough, as one might if one had been holding one's breath and was forced to inhale abruptly. Her eyes opened again. "My what now?" she asked.

"You're alive again. Whatever you did, did that to you. Somehow."

He wasn't at all prepared for her reaction. "I'm _alive_? But that's ... but ... how ..." She was stammering, confused, with an edge of near hysteria in her tone.

"It's all right," he said, trying to sound reassuring. "Everything's going to be okay. Chachamaru and I are right here, and with everyone's help, we'll make sure -"

"Excuse me," Arika said, leaning into the room from the hallway. "I hate to interrupt, Negi, but you should probably know that Nekane has woken up."

"I'll be right back," Negi said, still trying to sound reassuring as he immediately got up, turned away and dashed out into the hallway with nary a glance back at Evangeline ... nor, she noted in passing, a glance up at his mother. And she looked a bit upset at that, before she headed after him.

Evangeline wasn't really paying attention, though. She was too busy being utterly terrified of the prospect of all her old enemies learning that she was powerless, now.  


* * *

  
"Neechan!" Negi cried as he arrived at Nekane's bedside. Her room wasn't any different from Evangeline's, but it seemed much more brightly lit to him, and she was sitting up in bed where Evangeline had still been lying flat on her back.

"Negi," she said, still sounding half asleep. "Is it really all over?"

"Yes, we won, everything is fine. Why did you -"

She shook her head. "I don't really ... everything seems like just a very bad dream, that I just now woke up from. I dreamed that you were ... that I said you were ..." Nekane swallowed as she saw Arika lurking in the open doorway. "But you're not, of course, so of course, that had to be just a dream."

"Huh?" Negi asked, blinking.

"It's not important," she said, smiling for the first time in a while. "What's important is that I love you, Negi, and I can't wait to have our baby."

"... huh?" Negi repeated, in a somewhat higher tone.  


* * *

  
Arika wasn't sure she liked how this had turned out. Negi was behaving rather strangely, as though he found it difficult to look her in the face. Still, she supposed that all would be well in time.

She heard a familiar throat clearing behind her. "Ah, I was starting to fret over you, daughter," she said as she turned to look at Asuna. Then blinked as she saw that she was being accompanied by a small girl with an odd hairstyle.

"Um ... I'm honestly not sure how to go about doing this, so I'm just going to do it," Asuna said. "Mom, this is Asuna Jr., my daughter from the future."

"H-h-hello, Arika-obasan," the little girl stammered.

Arika just stared. Then, abruptly, it seemed to Asuna that her eyes took on a strange heart-shape. "It worked," she said faintly, smiling broadly at her grandchild before scooping the startled girl up in an embrace. "It wooorked!" she cooed.

"What worked?" Asuna asked, bewildered.

Chibi-Asu wasn't sure she could answer her mama's question, even if she wanted to, as she was hugged tightly against the woman who looked like a slightly younger version of Don't-Call-Her-Grandma. But the lady seemed happy, so she supposed that was all right. Over her shoulder, she was a bit surprised to see Nekane-obasan hugging a little boy as she lay in bed in the room off the hallway.

She wondered who the boy was. He looked cute.

* * *

_A day later, this happened._

"I am appalled," Konoemon said.

"And shocked?" Arika asked mildly as she stood before his desk.

"Yes, and shocked!" the old man snapped, annoyed at having his words anticipated like that. "In the wake of Takamichi's dismissal, I cannot believe that you have the sheer effrontery to, to simply inform me of these facts as though they are merely trivial."

"I wouldn't describe them as trivial," the former queen said with a polite shrug. "I'm not honestly sure that they're any of your business, though, so I'd consider my telling you to be something of a courtesy."

"Not any of my business!" gasped Konoemon, eyes wide open and bushy eyebrows high on his forehead. "The safety and security of the students of this academy are most certainly my business. And for a teacher to have willfully impregnated _nearly a dozen_ of the students I have placed under his care -"

"Not exactly willfully," Arika objected quietly.

"- with your knowledge and consent, if not actual contrivance -"

This time she simply smiled faintly, not arguing the point.

"- it goes beyond the definition of gross misconduct to the point of criminality!" he raged. "Frankly, only Negi-kun's youth would prevent me from seeking to have charges filed against him. You are another matter! And then, on top of that, you have the temerity to _demand_ that Negi-kun be allowed to continue working here, despite all of this!"

"It wasn't a demand," Arika said, taking advantage of the old man's pause to catch his breath. "It was a statement of fact. Negi will continue to work here as a teacher as long as it pleases him to do so."

The audacity almost stunned Konoemon. "And why in the wondrous world should I ever permit that?" he asked, quietly, as though genuinely curious.

"Because," said Arika, leaning forward and setting her hands on the facing edge of his desk. "If you do not, I will have no choice but to discuss with Negi the fact that you and the Magus of Meridiana have conspired to deceive and defraud him."

"What?" he gasped. "There has been no fraud! I will admit that neither of us have been as forthright with him as we might have been, but there's been no -"

"Negi's goal has always been to become a Magister Magi," she interjected mercilessly. "And while it is true that the magical academies of this world and the other _act_ as though they can bestow that title upon someone, it is also true that such degrees are honorary, and that a true Magister Magi is self-declared, upon the performance of a great deed of magic. _Such as the renewal of the spell sustaining the entire Magical World._"

Her fingers clenched tightly on the desk, denting the wood slightly. "For quite some time now, you and your peers have been aware of the fact that he is already a Magister Magi, and that you no longer have any claim on his time or energy. And yet you have not revealed this to him, and allowed him to believe that it is his duty to continue teaching here, and that a failure to perform that duty will result in the denial of the accolade that he has most certainly earned. That, sir, is fraud."

After a long moment, Konoemon spoke without looking directly at her. "There is something to what you say, but -"

"No buts. I am doing you the favor of not telling him this, because I believe that he truly enjoys being a teacher, and I wish him to have everything that his heart desires. So you will continue to employ his services, at the same grossly reduced salary that you have been paying him until now, since I've no wish to beggar you, as you would be by the fees customarialy paid to a Magister Magi to teach here. But you will definitely overlook his little eccentricities and living arrangements. It is most definitely in your interest to do so, unless you wish to make an enemy of him."

Konoemon sagged back into his chair, looking utterly beaten. "Very well," he said at last, after a long pause. "I seem to have no choice but to agree. But!" He abruptly regained some measure of defiance. "You are the one who will have to tell their parents!"

"Very well," Arika said equitably ... since she'd been planning on insisting on that in any event. "I'm pleased that you saw reason so easily."

"Reason has very little to do with any of this," Konoemon muttered.

She ignored that complaint. "And so I'm going to reward you." She clapped her hands once.

"What -" he said, but anything he might said died aborning as the door to his office opened up and a stocking-clad leg slid into view, arching and rubbing against the door - before the rest of Konoka, dressed in a similarly stripper-esque costume that clearly exposed her breasts, came into view. "Hi grandpa," she said in a very soft voice.

"... no," Konoemon gasped. "You can't be serious."

"Quite," Arika said as she went out the door. "Have fun, dear," she said in Konoka's direction, before closing it behind her.

With a dash and a bound, Konoka was across the room and in the headmaster's lap before he could move. (Actually, he probably could have moved rather easily, but he was genuinely stunned by this turn of events.) "Daddy's still healing from all he went through," she told him sweetly. "And Setchan and I are getting along great, now, but a healthy girl needs a good dicking now and then." A tiny bit of edge entered her tone. "That's what _he_ said to me, you know."

"No, no, Konoka-chan, this is wrong," the old man protested, trying to shift her out of his lap without hurting her. It was not so easy as you would think.

"Mmmm?" she said, licking up the side of his neck. "But this doesn't seem to think it's wrong." She reached down to his crotch and rubbed the organ which seemed to be getting harder there. "Is that for me?" Her voice got quieter. "Or is it for mommy who looked like me?"

He let out a helpless groan.

He let out another one a few moments later, as he held her legs and began slamming into her, and still another one when he emptied into her some time later, listening to her giggle as he did ...  


* * *

  
_A month or so later, this happened._

As Arika had promised, she took responsibility for informing the parents of Negi's partners of their situation. Of course, she pursued her own ends in doing so. Thus, it was understandable that the first one they informed was Chisame's mother, Sora. After a few false starts, and some highly enjoyable diversions, the mechanic was brought around to their way of thinking, and started to assist them in developing solutions to the problems presented by Chisame's pregnancy.

"When I was pregnant with Negi," Arika was saying, "I employed certain enchanted disguises to conceal it so that our enemies would not believe me to be weakened or vulnerable. These would not be inexpensive, but -"

"But if anything disrupted them, I'd be right back where I started. And a lot of things could go wrong over the next nine months to make that happen."

"Time is the problem," Negi murmured. "I wish Master was in a position to help us. Her resort would make that problem a lot easier to solve."

Sora blinked. "Resort? When you talk about this 'master' ... do you mean Evangeline?"

Arika turned sharply to look at the other woman. "Nagi told you about her?" she asked, frowning. "He didn't talk about her with me until I asked, and I only learned of his battle with her through other sources."

"When I asked about what he was doing for the Headmaster at Mahora, he told me everything," Sora replied, undaunted by Arika's expression. The thought that Nagi had been more forthcoming with her than with her buoyed up her self-confidence a bit. "And I thought that turning her into a child was a bit cruel, so he told me about her resort, where time slowed down. That's possible?" she asked, abruptly. "I wasn't sure whether to believe that part of it."

"It's possible," Arika confirmed, frown not fading. "But creating such artifacts is a magic more potent than any of us can use, and those who can use it might ask still higher prices for their assistance. Further, they would attract unwelcome - where are you going?"

"The kitchen," Sora said, having gotten up and started walking away. "Please excuse me for a moment."

* * *

_A few moments later, this happened._

After Arika recovered from her momentary loss of poise, she sat down to listen to the young goddess' discussion with the others, never taking her eyes off of her for even a second.

"So what you need is basically a stable singularity with a normal gravity 'chamber' inside the event horizon," Skuld said, reviewing the notes she'd taken.

"Yes, I suppose that's a good description," Sora agreed. "We -"

"Okay, I'll just go get some stuff I'm going to need to put it together," Skuld continued brusquely as she stood up.

"Uh, aren't you going to ask why we need it?" the ex-mechanic asked, a little startled by how quickly things were moving along.

Skuld looked at her oddly. "When you helped me, you didn't ask why I needed you to do things."

"Oh."

"Um, just a moment," said Negi, striving to keep up with this conversation. Understandably, physics wasn't one of his strong suits. When one can defy what are generally thought of as laws of nature, understanding those laws is seldom a priority. But he had picked up a few things over the last little while, particularly after Satomi had started lending him science fiction stories.

So he felt inclined to ask for confirmation. "A singularity is what they call a black hole, correct?"

"It's technically the other way around, but, yes," Skuld answered. "Time is distorted by a sufficiently large amount of gravity, like you encounter inside the event horizon of a singularity. By controlling the gravity you experience, you feel like time is passing at a normal rate, even though it's actually sped up dramatically. And of course, you aren't crushed into subatomic particles."

"Oh," said Negi, and gulped. "And this is how all time distortion areas work?"

"There's other ways, but this is easiest. The others take a lot more start-up time."

"I see," he said faintly. "Thank you." Despite his unease at discovering exactly what they were about to go through, he felt a bit relieved to be talking to a woman who didn't seem to be even remotely -

And then he saw the look she was giving him from the corner of her eye as she turned back to talk to Sora again. "I'll be back in just a bit," she said, and he was sure that he wasn't imagining the faint note of promise in her tone.

With a serious effort, he stopped himself from sighing as she walked back into the kitchen.

As Chisame discussed certain heretofore unknown facts about her youth with her mother, Arika was lost in thought. At last she spoke up. "Sora-san," she said, in her politest tone. "I would request your permission to use your telephone. I have quite a few calls to make."

"Please, feel free," said Sora, bewilderedly.

There was a large splashing noise from the kitchen. Skuld promptly darted into the room. "Okay, I'm going to need a second pair of hands for this."

* * *

_An hour or so later, this happened._

Sora's kitchen resembled the engine room of the USS Enterprise.

"All right, one last bit of fine tuning and we're good to go," Skuld opined as she examined some charmingly retro-looking gauges through her goggles. "About how much time distortion are we looking at, here?"

"The one in the resort was an hour outside for every day inside," Negi started to say.

"So you only need about three days, then?" Skuld interrupted. "Because this thing won't hold together for longer than about three hours. I've basically used the equivalent of baling wire in assembling it, and I'm going to have to watch it like a hawk or it'll collapse and take out most of this part of Japan."

"Really," said Negi, starting to panic again. "Maybe then -"

"A year," Chisame interjected. "Make an hour outside last a year inside ... and that'll be enough."

"Okay, about 1:9000 then. I can't get any more precise than that, so it's going to be a year to a little less than an hour, but ... well, anyway. Who's going in?"

"We are," said Negi, gesturing between himself and Chisame.

"You're not," said Chisame, gesturing at him.

"Ehh?" he asked sharply.

"You can't," she said firmly. "If it takes a year, then by the time you come out, you could be going through a growth spurt. People will notice. They will ask questions. You can't."

"I can't let you go through this alone, is what I can't do!" Negi protested.

"I won't," Chisame said.

"Of course you won't," Sora interjected. "I'm coming with you."

Chisame blinked. "Mother!" she said, startled.

"I haven't been a good one, I know, but I won't let you go through this without any help -"

"That will not be an issue," Arika interjected. "If you believe nothing else, believe that a lack of help will not be an issue."

There was a knock at the door. The former queen sauntered out of the kitchen to answer it ... and then there was the sound of many feet and more than a dozen voices chattering as they came closer. Arika, accompanied by the young girl whom Sora recognized from Negi's memories as Asuna, holding a much younger girl who looked markedly similar to her in her arms. She was accompanied by dozens of other young women whom Sora also recognized from those memories, most of whom looked fairly cheerful - though one (Naba was her name, she thought) was regarding Arika with a rather hostile expression as she walked along behind the blonde girl whom Sora knew to be Ayaka. And then there was a young boy with odd ears, and two girls who were clearly and obviously not human, and ...

"Whawhawha?" Sora asked.

"As I said, your daughter will not lack for help," Arika said. "Introductions can wait until we are safely within the phenomenon. I will be entering it myself, as well."

Skuld slowly looked from the large group of girls to Negi to the girls again. "Ooookay," she said. "This is straining my 'ask no questions' policy quite a bit, you know."

"But it's a wise policy nonetheless," said a tall blonde whom Sora recognized as Negi's cousin, though she was dressed in a pure white sundress and had a distant, vague expression on her face.

"Probably," said Skuld. "Okay, then, hold hands and -" She threw a large switch, and on top of a flat surface, a glowing purple globe appeared. "- step into the glowing purple globe."

They started to do so, though Chisame gave a start and a hostile stare as she ended up having to hold hands with a petite, violet haired girl who gave her one in return. But they all marched into the globe, leaving Negi and Skuld alone in the kitchen.

That condition lasted a moment, until a very petite girl with long blonde hair poked her head in. "Are they gone?" asked Evangeline.

"Yes, for an hour or so," Negi told her, looking unhappy.

"... they'll be back, you know," she told him. "Wait and hope."

* * *

_Over the next objective hour, and the next subjective year, this happened._

With Sora's help, Chizuru and Kotaro were able to care for the large number of pregnant women. It wasn't easy, particularly given the rivalries and emnities that had developed among them. But everyone was conscious that they were part of something greater and more wonderful than such things.

As it happened, Collet gave birth to her triplets first, being of a people with a shorter gestation period than mundane humanity. But Asuna's daughter followed sooner, and if they were all surprised by the way that Chibi-Asu seemed incapable of realizing that the baby her mother had just delivered was herself, it was more of amusement than anything else. One by one, they delivered safely and easily, and the babies were put in the nursery so the mothers could rest and recuperate.

Including Nigel, Negi's first-born son, born from Nekane. Chizuru settled him into his crib and then quickly headed over to attend to the wailing of Yue's daughter.

And so she didn't see Nigel's eyes open, and the vague blue color of one of his eyes turn bright green for just a moment.

_It was the end of the beginning, and the beginning of the_ end.

**To Be Continued.**


	2. Chapter 2

_Standard issue disclaimer: Negima was created by Akamatsu Ken and its ownership is somewhat disputed. I am not him, or any of them. This is parody, protected speech._

**Descendant Habits  
Chapter Two**

_On December 24 of the year in which Alladia Autarkia Entheofushia attacked Mahora, this happened._

She stood in the basement, holding her shilling and staring at the bottle, long after all of the others had gone upstairs to enjoy each other's company.

"Merry Christmas," Arika said at last, making the words a curse. "And the new year will be ... interesting, I'm sure."

* * *

_Two months after Alladia's assault on Mahora, this happened._

Asuna was fairly sure that the training she'd put in over the years with her paper route hadn't been intended to help her with this situation, but it did. She was already semi-awake when the baby starting making fussing noises, so it was easy for her to get to fully awake before her daughter started crying. Of course, there was more to getting up than there was to waking up, she mused amusedly as she realized that her daughter - the slightly more grown up incarnation of her daughter - was sleeping in bed with her and Negi, and was latched on to the nipple of her right breast. For his part, Negi was latched on to the other one.

Getting up without disturbing either of them was probably impossible. Ah well. She thrived on the impossible. "Okay, kids, the buffet is closed," she muttered as she began to separate the two of them from her teats. They made sleepy sounds of protest, but had settled down by the time she finally extricated herself from her bedsheets and quickly made her way over to her daughter - the under-a-year-old incarnation of her daughter - in her cradle, lifted her up and began serving her breakfast.

Asuna was relieved by the fact that there was some left. Between Chibi-Asu, Negi, and Konoka, there were times when she was honestly frightened that there wasn't going to be. Carrying the nursing infant over to the window, she watched as Mahora slowly started to wake up.

She still wasn't used to this view, so different from the one she'd had for the last two-and-a-half years. Their ... complicated living arrangement - Asuna preferred to just call it being shacked up, but that embarassed Satomi - had meant that living in the dorms was out of the question. So Arika had arranged for the acquisition of a house on the outskirts of Mahora, whose previous inhabitants had mysteriously disappeared. The fact that the place had the obvious look of a haunted house still made Asuna a little uncomfortable, but she could at least take comfort in the certainty that her mother hadn't had anything to do with the disappearance, which had happened a few months before she even came to Mahora.

Almost everyone had moved in. Ayaka was still wafffling on whether it would be better to raise her daughter in the dreamhouse or in this place, with her many brothers and sisters. Even Chizuru, who was still technically on the fringe of the arrangement - having sex only with Kotaro, Natsumi and Ayaka, never any of the others - had taken the top bunk in Kotaro and Natsumi's room, where she seemed actually very happy to be enlisted as Kikyo-chan's part-time nanny.

Ironically, the only one of Negi's intimate companions who wasn't living here at least a few days out of the week was the one who technically owned the place. Arika was absent more often than she was present, always heading off on mysterious missions she wouldn't discuss. "Not yet," she'd say to questions about her activities. "You'll know when the time comes." Asuna didn't particularly want to criticize her, but she was starting to suspect that even if Arika hadn't been imprisoned for years, she wouldn't have been terribly involved in Negi's life growing up.

What was the term - helicopter parent? Well, she didn't travel around in a helicopter, so that image didn't really make much sense to Asuna.

Still, she had to give her mother the credit for obtaining their child care providers. Asuna just wished that she knew more about who they were, these women who showed up every morning as the mothers (and fathers) were heading off to school. They were dark-skinned, wore black, spoke Japanese with an accent that no one could place. They kind of reminded her of Cocone, actually, but she was fairly sure that they weren't from Hellas. It was a mystery ... and perhaps the most annoying part of it was that Mana, in a fit of paranoia, had been driven to find out the answer to the mystery - but wouldn't tell anyone else what it was!

"You like them, though?" she asked her daughter, who burped in response. "I thought so."

It was about time for Konoka to get up, but she suspected that her roommate was probably going to have just as much problems. She glanced up at the top bunk, confirming that Konoka was there, that she was not alone, and that she was not with Setsuna, either. Asuna made a face. She had the distinct impression that Setsuna was probably off with Tsukuyomi again, having one of their ridiculous 'practice' bouts that usually didn't end until one or both of them was bleeding rather heavily.

Asuna really wasn't all that happy about the supposedly-reformed psychopath who lived downstairs with her own daughter. If her own mother was at best a helicopter parent to her younger half-sister/niece, then Tsukuyomi was utterly neglectful of the daughter she'd named Amaterasu. If not for the nanny army, Asuna suspected that Amaterasu wouldn't get any care at all. Nobody really wanted to associate with her except Setsuna, who limited her contact ... except when she didn't.

These were not exactly the days of wine and roses. (Well, definitely not wine. They were nursing.)

Glancing at the bed again, she saw that Chibi-Asu and Negi were starting to get a little too close together. The little girl had a weird fascination with Negi. She refused to call him papa, where she always called Asuna 'mama', and seemed to regard him as a potential mate. Well, given what all they got up to, that wasn't all that weird. But she'd made Negi promise that he wouldn't encourage her - which he usually didn't do, even if he didn't 'never' do it as he sometimes protested.

In retrospect, it might have been something of a mistake to let her watch as the two of them fucked, a week or so after she'd shown up, with Asuna, between gasps of ecstasy, explaining just what was going on as Negi drove up into her. Chibi-Asu had watched with wide, fascinated eyes. And she'd explicitly asked if she could do that too.

"Your next birthday," Asuna had told her. And now was living in quiet dread of Chibi-Asu's seventh birthday, which had been somewhat arbitrarily set on the same day as her own. Anyway, that was still most of a year away, so she quietly separated the two of them.

While she was doing, Konoka's bedmate woke up with a startled exclamation, and hopped down out of the top bunk with a frightened expression that didn't get any less frightened when she saw Asuna with a baby at her breast.

"Good morning, Haruna," said Asuna, determined to be polite.

"Morning. Um. Oh, look, a UFO!" the busty mangaka said, pointing off to one side.

"... I'm not falling for that again," Asuna replied, lips quirking in a smile. How dumb ...

Well, what if there really was one this time? She looked.

And Haruna took the opportunity to dash out the door of the room. Asuna shook her head and waited.  
Moments later, Haruna returned, all wounded dignity. "May I please have my clothes back?" she asked.

"I wondered when you'd notice," Asuna mused.

* * *

_Events which took place five weeks after Alladia's assault on Mahora had their roots in these events, which took place two days after that assault.  
_  
Even in Japan, and even at Mahora, an anatomically correct giant statue cannot go on a rampage and not make the news. Fortunately, the administration was able to cover it up with help from various state agencies, and so the impression most people had was that it had been yet another runaway robot from those wacky mad scientists at the University. (This annoyed Satomi and Asakura for different reasons.)

One result of the chaos was that a fair number of people who boarded at the school were getting frantic phone calls from their families, or even surprise visits. Nodoka herself had received a short phone call from her father. She would probably have been more moved if she hadn't heard a faint note of hope in his tone when he asked her if she wanted to continue attending school at Mahora. (Which meant that he'd have been just as happy if she died, since it would mean he could stop paying for her schooling.)

But she was happy for those of her friends who did get to visit with their family, like Haruna, on whom she was planning to pay a surprise visit in hopes of mending some fences. She found the door open, but still knocked.

Haruna came to the door, smiling broadly. "Oh, this is gonna be good. Hey, Nodoka, there's someone I'd like you to meet!" And she pulled Nodoka into the room. "Miyazaki Nodoka, meet —"

"Saotome Nodoka, " the purply-haired woman in the kimono said softly, with a gentle smile. "Thank you for taking such good care of my daughter."

Nodoka stared.

Nodoka smiled. "Daughter, why don't you run down to the store and get us some drinks while I talk about you behind your back with your friend?"

"I love the honesty!" Haruna thrilled as she headed out.

Nodoka stared. "She doesn't see it, does she?" she finally asked.

Nodoka shook her head. "No, I don't think she can. To be fair to her, I think I've changed a lot, these ... well. I'll spare you the number of years."

"How did this happ-"

Again, Nodoka shook her head. "I don't think you should know that either. It will happen, and it has to happen. Just like this meeting. You're going to have a full life - it'll just be mostly spent in a different century than you were expecting."

"I'm not going to get Negi-sensei, am I?" she asked herself faintly.

"I didn't say that, " Nodoka answered herself, smiling broadly.

Slowly, the younger Nodoka lowered herself into a chair across the table from her older self. "It's ... it's really sort of ironic, I think," she mused out loud. "I've lost track of the number of times Haruna has groped me over the last few years, and ... and she's so horrified at the thought of what Negi-sensei and his mother get up to." That she herself had been somewhat shocked by the revelation was temporarily forgotten.

A flash of pain crossed the older woman's face. "It's more ironic than you realize."

"What do you mean?"

Haruna's mother considered her in silence for a few moments, before answering the question with another one. "Has Haruna-chan told you about her first ... romantic encounter?" she asked, delicately.

Nodoka nodded in silence. "With her brother's friend. I don't -"

"He is my first born. I gave him up for adoption before I married Haruna's father. I still think it was the right decision, but it's haunted me since the boy came to me in tears, confessing how he'd defiled my daughter and begging for my forgiveness."

Nodoka blinked. "But ... how could you not have known, if you -"

"I don't really remember the details of this conversation from your side of it, dear," the elder Nodoka said, shaking her head. "It was so long ago ... I'd almost convinced myself that it had all been a dream, until I gave birth to Haruna after my husband and I were reunited, sixteen years ago. Even then ... it's all so far away." She shrugged, smiling sadly. "The only really clear things are the ones that I don't want to tell you. Nobody should know too much about their own future."

Despite a few attempts at it, the younger Nodoka got no more than that out of her older counterpart, and they moved on to other matters by the time that Haruna finally came back.

* * *

_Subsequently, five weeks later, this happened._

Getting the Library Exploration Club reinstated had been extraordinarily easy. In his rare lucid moments, Konoemon could deny his granddaughter nothing. They hadn't even had to forge any of the paperwork, this time. Of course, even if he hadn't been lucid when Konoka and Nodoka, after giving him that day's servicing, made the request, the required forgery wouldn't have been all that hard, with his secretary firmly under their sway as well.

Haruna had been wary. She knew much and suspected much more about their activities, and the explanation they gave her about simply wanting an opportunity to do some stuff separate from their other attachments, and remembering all the good times they'd had together in the library, must have rung somewhat hollow to her. Which was ironic, given that the explanation was entirely sincere on Konoka and Yue's part.

Nodoka, of course, was not nearly as sincere. She had plans that required Haruna's involvement, and to fulfill them, she would and had done everything and anything that they required.

It had really begun when she'd given birth, in that timeless space, to a daughter. A daughter. (She'd named her Ranko. No particular reason; she just liked the sound of it.) She'd been expecting the son that her older self had promised her. She'd been hoping that she would be the first to give Negi-sensei a son. Not only had she not done so, but Chisame, _fucking Chisame_, had. The only thing she could take comfort in was that Chisame's Nara wasn't his only son; that favor would have to be divided among Nara, Nigel born of Nekane, Ako's son Kiri, and Naegi and Nagito, the two boys born on the same 'day' to Fuuka and Fumika, respectively.

But it had been very surprising, the realization that her older self - _if _that was who Haruna's mother actually was - was wrong about what was going to happen to her. She now suspected that the older Nodoka might actually have arrived back in time on a different timeline than the one where she originated. In the days that followed, Nodoka had put a lot of effort into studying the phenomenon of these 'sliders', as they were sometimes called. It hadn't led anywhere, but all knowledge was useful somehow.

In any event, Haruna had eventually given in to their invitations and joined them on another expedition into the depths of Library Island. And it had actually been a lot of fun. Like going back in time, being a child again, seeing parts of the library that nobody had seen in years or even decades. It made Nodoka wish that she could still be a ruin explorer like she'd been in the magical world ... but that life was lost to her, at least for a few years. She had responsibilities, now, and she was going to live up to them.

And so, when they'd reached the mid-point of the expedition, in an isolated chamber high in the building where the lights had burned out long ago and never been replaced. It was time for a rest, so they pitched a tent ... and then Yue and Konoka, following the parts assigned to them by Nodoka's plan (enthusiastically in one case, somewhat less so in another, complete with the predictable nonsense about how Nodoka was moving far away from her) went into the tent holding hands. Unmistakable noises began to come from the tent soon after.

Haruna blinked, looked uncomfortable, and glanced at Nodoka, who was still sitting beside her. "Um, shouldn't you be heading in to join those two -"

"I am where I want to be," Nodoka interrupted, and quickly kissed Haruna's cheek before the other girl could pull away.

"Nodoka, no," Haruna said, sounding very sad and tired. "I know you probably think this is a good idea, but -"

"I want to be with you, Haruna. You deserve a little happiness in your life, don't you?" She reached out, rested a hand on one of Haruna's breasts, covered by the sweater she was wearing but quite apparent nonetheless. It was still so much bigger than hers, even though she had blossomed considerably since Ranko was born. (Yue had, too, but even less. It really annoyed her, though Ariadne didn't seem to mind all that much.)

"No. I mean yes. But also no," Haruna babbled. But she notably didn't push the hand presently groping her away. "I mean, no, this isn't going to make me happy. Look, I'm sorry, but all of you are into some stuff that's too much for me. I don't want any part of it."

And now Nodoka smiled as she cuddled up beside Haruna, her other hand coming down to Haruna's hip. "But Haruna. You already have part of it."

"What?" asked Haruna, bewildered by how forward Nodoka was being as much as by her words. "What do you mean by that?"

And Nodoka told her what she meant by that. All knowledge was useful. Especially the knowledge that Haruna's first sexual experience had been unwittingly incestuous.

"No," Haruna gasped when she'd heard it. "No, that's, no, that can't be -"

Suppressing the urge to say, 'search your feelings, you know it to be true,' Nodoka pressed on. "Why would your own mother lie about something like that? If if's so shameful, why would she invent it?"

"She wouldn't!" the taller girl exclaimed, trying to pull away without much success. The hunter had become the hunted, and it wasn't very entertaining for her. "But you -"

"I would never lie to you," Nodoka said seriously. "To other people, maybe. But to you? One of my first true friends? I have never deliberately lied to you, and I never will. If I hide things from you, that's another matter, but I will never tell you false things to do so. Not in the future, and certainly not now."

"Even so! Even accepting that this isn't crazy bullshit, it doesn't mean I want to do it again!"

"And then there are your fantasies about the brother you knew about," Nodoka continued as her hand on Haruna's hip began to slowly move towards her friend's belt buckle.

"That's not - even if I think about that, it doesn't mean I want -"

"Paruuuu," Nodoka groaned. "Why are you refusing this? It makes us all so happy, so what is the big deal?"

"Because it's just a dream, Nodoka!" Haruna sounded almost as frustrated as she herself did. "It's wrong! At least you're not related to anyone -"

"I wish I were!" Nodoka interrupted, angrily. "I wish that my mother had been having an affair with Nagi-san or somebody, and that Negi was my little brother like - that he was my little brother, too! Then at least I would know that I was made in love, however illicit, rather than just out of someone's greed!" _And I'd be as close to him as _they_ are._ "Zazie-san said that I should stop pushing away the people I want in my life! So why, why, why, when I'm trying so hard to keep you in mine, are you pushing _me_ away like this?"

Haruna had thought she couldn't go any whiter. She was wrong. She stopped trying to pull away, and held the despairing girl tightly against her. "We're doomed, aren't we?" she asked.

"Maybe," answered Nodoka, speaking into Haruna's breasts. "But at least we'll be together when the doom comes."

"That's something, I guess," she said ... and allowed herself to be drawn down into the kiss. that followed shortly.

In Haruna's favorite genre of manga, there were two roles. There was the active partner, the seme, and the emotive partner, the uke. The terms were actually more closely equivalent to the terms 'pitcher' and 'catcher'. Haruna had always acted as though she would be the active partner in any relationship, but now she was forced to acknowledge that she was the uke, again. Just as she had been when - she could not think of him as her brother - had wrestled with her until it stopped being wrestling. Just as she had been that night when she and Harumi-sempai had been working too hard and then stopped working. And now, too.

For the seme was also the one who just did things, while the uke was the one who felt them. And she was feeling quite a bit right now, as Nodoka did things to her.

Of course, a few minutes later, as Nodoka was down between the taller girl's legs and licking provocatively at her clitoris as Haruna sobbed somewhat helplessly, it occurred to Nodoka that this sexual experience was technically incestuous, too, though she had no intention of mentioning that. Besides, it was only technical, since she probably wasn't going to become Haruna's mother.

Probably.

* * *

_Six weeks after the assault on Mahora, this happened._

Asuna, after taking a moment to check out Haruna's ass as the other girl picked up her clothes, stooped to help her by picking up the bra and offering it to her.

"Thank you," Haruna said, still gravely dignified, taking it from Asuna's outstretched hand. "You should get dressed too."

"Why?" Asuna asked calmly. "I'm in _my_ bedroom, in my house."

They were both speaking fairly quietly, to avoid waking any of the still slumbering people nearby. Haruna's wish to do so clearly contrasted with her desire to express herself as fully as possible, when she murmured, "You are determined to make this as awkward as possible, aren't you?"

"Sorry for making it awkward," Asuna said, annoyed. "But I really don't see what the big deal is. Come on, Paru, you've shown that you have self-control, you know?"

Tthat was true. She'd said that she wasn't interested in fucking Negi, and she'd kept to that. She'd had sex with just about every girl in the harem, with the notable exception of Akira - who wasn't interested in gaining new lovers and actually only seemed to still be having relations with Yuna and Ako out of a sense of obligation. And she hadn't had sex with Kotaro, which actually put her ahead of Asuna, who hadn't been able to resist jumping the little dog-boy's bones one day when she was bored after giving birth to her daughter.

By this point, actually, most of the girls had given him a ride. Between those bouts of experimentation on their part and his regular liaisons with Natsumi and Chizuru - who also still hadn't had sex with Negi - he was getting as much tail as anybody. Ako had even given him a threesome with her and Madoka, who was still technically outside the harem. For now. As long as Negi kept up sparring with him - which he did - the beta male seemed content.

"The big deal is, we have to get to class pretty soon, and further to go than we used to," Haruna said.

"Well, gee, I think I can sweet-talk my homeroom teacher into not marking any of us absent," Asuna replied blandly. "When he wakes up, that is."

"Yeah, that's fair to the rest of the class," Haruna grumbled. "I still think we ought to arrange to have a new homeroom teacher if we're going to be doing this."

"Then bring it up at the business meeting," Asuna said with a shrug that dislodged her teat from the mouth of Chibi-Asu, who seemed momentarily satiated and content to be rocked to sleep. Asuna began to do so as she continued. "Maybe you'd rather have Takahata-sensei back?" she asked, smiling ironically.

"Funny," sneered Haruna. "Funnneee."

The restoration of Takamichi's position had been one of the harder tasks that the group had undertaken once they realized that Konoka's grandfather, and through him most of the administration of the school, was now under their sway. More than anything else, it had been an experiment to see how far their control went. The old man had actually mustered some resistance to the idea, arguing that even if one ignored his confession (this said without a glance down at Konoka who was blowing him at the time) there were still a number of reports of his activities which suggested - and so on and so forth.

So they'd had to bring in the heavy artillery, and so Asuna had found out what it was like to get fucked by a _really_ old guy, as she lay back on his desk and he pumped away between her spread legs while Setsuna and Konoka took turns sitting on her face. It had been better sex than she'd expected, particularly when combined with the sounds she could hear from his office's anteroom, of Shizuna-sensei getting banged by Kotaro while, not too far away, Nitta-sensei was nearly having a heart attack from what Yuna was doing as she rode him on the couch. In then end, everyone had been firmly persuaded of the merits of the argument brought before them.

Takamichi had lost all of his seniority and most of his privileges, but he had his job back. He'd thanked her, even though his face suggested he wasn't all that happy about it. And she'd thanked him right back. Even though he wasn't the art club's supervisor any more, she still thanked him regularly at their private art lessons. By thanking, of course, what she really meant was fucking like animals.

She had an art lesson this afternoon, come to think of it.

* * *

_Later that same day, this happened._

"Hey, Asuna. You got a minute?" Misa asked abruptly.

They were all out on the lawn behind the school building, enjoying lunch together, and Asuna wasn't doing anything more strenuous than listening to Chisame and Nodoka be passive aggressive at each other and watching, with some vague amusement, the paranoid way Evangeline was reacting to pretty much everything. She honestly thought it was a minor miracle that, between Negi and Chachamaru, the little girl had been persuaded to come to school most days, since she seemed to be afraid of just about everything.

But a distraction would be welcome. "Sure thing," she said, turning to look at her classmate, who was standing beside her. She blinked at a belated realization. "Where's Sakurako and Madoka?" she asked before Misa could say anything.

Misa's expression soured. "They're off being Sakurako and Madoka. We're not a hivemind, you know. Actually ... well, that's part of what I want to talk to you about. Over there," she added, with a gesture towards the woodlands bordering the lawn.

"Ooooh, Misa is inviting Asuna to go off into the woods with her," commented Fuuka, who was nearby and listening in (of course), with a sly grin on her face (also of course.)

"Eeee, so romantic!" agreed Fumika.

"Oh, get your heads out of the gutter," Misa growsed as Asuna stood up.

"Way too hard," the twins chorused ... probably accurately, Asuna thought, considering some of the rather extreme stuff she'd seen the two of them doing to each other.

"So what's up?" Asuna asked once they were out of earshot of the others.

Misa turned back to look at her, face set in what she was probably wanted to look like a serious face. "Are you having sex with Negi-kun?"

Asuna considered the question for what she realized was probably just a bit too long, before making her reply. "You mean, right now? Obviously not."

Misa gritted her teeth and reached up as to pull her hair - without actually touching it, of course, because she'd spent way too much on hair-care products to do that sort of thing. An incomprehensible noise later, she resumed ordinary speech. "Don't give me obfuscating stupidity, Asuna! You know perfectly well what I mean!"

"Okay, sorry, okay ... yes," she admitted with a sigh. She wasn't about to deny her love to anybody, for any reason. She'd gone through too much for that.

"Knew it," Misa grunted. "Who else?"

"... who else am I having sex with or who else is he having sex with?"

"Yes," Misa groaned. "I mean, no, just the latter. But if you're not being monogamous, I sure as shit hope that you're -"

"Konoka, Setsuna, Yuna, Akira, Ako, Ayaka, Chisame, Satomi, Nodoka, Yue, Mana, Kaede, Fuuka, Fumika, Natsumi, and Chachamaru," Asuna ratttled off. She didn't mention their mother for the perfectly reasonable reason that it wasn't any of Misa's business - although, actually, none of this was any of her business - and because that didn't seem to be happening anymore, even when Arika showed up. It was a little bewildering, really. And she didn't mention Nekane and Tsukuyomi because that was definitely none of Misa's business. (If Collet's application to emigrate was approved, she might have to be added to the list, but it was wrapped up in red tape and she and her puppies were still living in Ariadne for now.)

Misa's eyes went wide. "Orum," she muttered.

"Sorry?" Asuna asked.

"More than half the fucking class?" Misa said, keeping her voice low but clearly suggesting a desire to shriek.

"Well, since I'm given to understand that Makie is the only girl in our class who's not getting it on with _someone_, that's pretty accurate, yes." Sixteen was more than half of thirty. Asuna hated math but she could do that much easily. Relatively easily.

"I don't believe this," Misa muttered, looking like she was about to pull an Ayaka and faint. "I'm the eros queen of our class, and I'm just _now_ finding out about this?"

"It's all started fairly recently, so it's not like you've missed all that much," Asuna said, trying to sound vaguely consoling. She wasn't too sure what possessed her to ask the next question. Maybe her mother's notions were influencing her more than she realized. "Do you want in?"

Misa's jaw dropped. When it came back up again, her face began to make a series of contortions that allowed Asuna to see that not only was the girl rather fetching, she had some really interesting expressions. When her face finally settled on a rather contemplative mode, Asuna was fairly sure that she was about to get the answer to her question.  
And she did. But it was a surprise to her. "I don't know," Misa said.

"You don't know whether you want in or not?" Asuna asked, disbelieving. "I figured one way or another, you'd know your own mind. That's sort of your thing."

"My thing is whatever I want my thing to be," Misa answered tensely. "Just ... how serious is all of this?"

"Pretty damn serious," Asuna replied, thinking of her daughter sleeping at home, in two different places at the same time.

"Orum," Misa repeated.

"Seriously, what does that mean?"

Misa ignored the question. "I mean, okay, the whole point of the Reverse Hikaru Genji project is to get a cool boyfriend _eventually_, not ... right now. I wasn't averse to the idea of a little fun before then, but ... I don't like the idea of being in a harem. I just don't. It's the exact opposite of everything I was trying to achieve. But on the other hand ... if you're really serious, you've probably already picked out his official wife, right?"

Asuna blinked, stunned Misa's mood swings. She was starting to think this girl might be worse than Ayaka, in that department. "Uh, no. We're still working that out." That was within the shade of the truth. Honestly, it hadn't ever come up. Asuna had a feeling that Arika might have some sort of scheme that would allow her to marry Negi. Maybe by claiming he was actually Nagi's son by someone else, and had only been adopted by her. But if so, then she hadn't yet confided any details about it to Asuna herself.

"So then that's still open," Misa said slowly. "And from what I've been able to make out of Ako's periodic tearful confessions of her so-called misdeeds, he really is some sort of prince?"

"Well, our mother is a queen and she does plan to restore her kingdom."

"Hah," said Misa, assuming (incorrectly) that Asuna's use of 'mom' just meant that she saw Negi's mother and her mother-in-law-elect as her own mother. She was a little too distracted by the naked greed and raw ambition she was currently experiencing. "This ... has potential. _Lots_ of potential." But then she frowned. "I'm gonna need some assurances, though. You are all using protection, right?"

Asuna abruptly decided to lie her head off. "Yes," she said. She had a feeling that it would be dumb, even for her, to tell Misa that doing so would be like closing the barn door after the horses had already bolted - a phrase she'd picked up from Ayaka.

"Really?" Misa frowned.

"I tell you what," Asuna said, getting annoyed. "If you're really concerned, you can come over tonight and give us a review of the famous Kakizaki Misa Sex Ed and Birth Control lectures. You'll even have people who can give demonstrations this time."

"Tempting," said Misa, missing the sarcasm. "Very tempting. But I'll want to bring Madoka and Saku with me. It's not fair to them -"

"I thought you weren't a hivemind."

"We're not, but still."

Asuna shook her head. "It's no big deal. Madoka's already on the periphery, anyways, and Sakurako -"

"Whoa whoa whoa, hey what?" Misa asked, eyes gone wide. "I knew about her, and Ako, and Akira and Yuna and all that, but - has she already -"

"No, not with Negi," Asuna interrupted. "She did it with Ako and Kotaro, while he was in his aged-up form."

"... with who in his what now?"

* * *

"For what I am now compelled to do, I will one day take vengeance on God Himself," Evangeline announced.

"Okay," Negi agreed, conscious as he did that he probably shouldn't be encouraging her in that sort of idea.

Evangeline took a deep breath. Then scowled at having done so. Silently she raised up the beginner's wand and said, not chanted, "Practe Bigi Naru, Ardescat."

A moment later, she looked up from the tiny flame now dancing on the wand's head. "I," she announced with utter sarcasm, "have made fire."

Before Negi could applaud this progress, she blew on it and snuffed it out, dropping the wand and slumping in a blatant pout, one hand on her jaw and the other drumming in annoyance on the table of the desk where she was sitting. The two of them were presently using an abandoned classroom for their lessons while everyone else was off with their clubs.

Negi felt moved to comment. "I think you're doing really well, Ma -"

GLARE.  
_  
Right. Avoid that term._ "But I really do think that! Didn't you tell me that it took you about a hundred years to learn how to do that, originally?"

The GLARE did not measurably ease. "It took me most of a century to calm down enough from what had been done to me to think about learning magic, and a few years to find someone willing to teach me. Do you _really_ want to know how long it took me to do this stupid kindermagic once I actually accomplished that?"

"Days?" he guessed.

"_Hours_," she snapped. "Your father is an asshole who has wrecked my life! _Again!_"

"I'm sure that Father had a good reason for this!" Negi protested.

"And when we find the bastard, I look forward to asking him what the hell he was thinking! Right before I torture him for months! Why would anyone think that I'd want to be so, so ..." She screwed up her face as the word finally escaped her lips. "Helpless."

Negi promptly did something unfathomably brave and reached out to wrap Evangeline's stiff, tense body in an embrace. "You're not helpless," he said. "You're not alone. You have me, and Chachamaru, and all our friends looking out for you."

"Ntlylvm," she muttered against his shoulder.

"What was that?" he asked.

"I said, you'd better hope that's enough to stop all the head hunters who'll come after me once it gets out that I've been brought down to normal like this," said Evangeline, who hadn't said anything like that. "Because I doubt that the administration that's handing out the bounties is going to care all that much that I'm not doing the fighting on my own."

"Then we'll all go down together," Negi told her.

"Romantic nihilism. How charming," she grumbled.

"And you are making progress. It's just a matter of figuring out how to rebuild the connections that were lost when you were transformed."

"No, it's not just that. Even if I do rebuild the channels, I don't have the energy reserves to power most of them anymore. Trying to cast Kosmike Katastrophe now would kill me halfway through the first verse. My martial arts drew on muscles I don't have anymore. I'm _weak_."

"Then get stronger," Negi said. "And the only way to do that is -"

"To cheat."

"To work hard," said Negi, frowning.

"Bah."

He let out a sigh. "I believe in you. I believe that you will overcome this." He impulsively kissed her forehead, then stepped back, blushing.

"Father of twenty blushes at kissing a girl, film at eleven," Evangeline groused.

"Anyway ... I have to go finish up grading some homework. I'll put a ward on the door to keep anyone who's not on the list out, so just wait here for Chachamaru to finish up with her club. And try practicing. It can't hurt." He stepped out of the room, closing the door behind him.  
_  
Until you leave me,_ she'd said.

Silently, she picked the wand up again, staring at it. "Practe Bigi Naru ..." she murmured.

* * *

_Day 19 of my surveillance of the subject,_ ran Yuna's internal monologue. _Once again observing her in the company of Fujino Shizuru, class representative and expected stucon presidential candidate. Relationship seems likely, but full understanding of relationship's nature still eludes me. Does not appear to be an s-class relationship, despite numerous rumors concerning Fujino and her lily harem. Rumors possibly false? Must investigate -_

"What're you doing?" Makie asked from behind her. To be perfectly accurate, Makie asked the question from just a bit behind the bush Yuna was using as camouflage while she spied on - not stalked - Kuga Natsuki.

Yuna was by now a trained field operative, so she didn't jump up in surprise and shock and so give away her position that way. But her actual response, grabbing Makie and yanking her down behind the bush as well, did disturb it quite a bit, causing one of the girls she was watching to break off in mid-sentence and stare oddly in its direction.

"Why are you trying to blow my cover?" Yuna hissed.

"I'm not trying to blow anything!" Makie protested. "I don't even know how to set explosives!"

Yuna stared at her, recent experience in translating from Asuna-speak into normal language serving her well, here. But it still took a few moments for her to process what she'd just heard. "No, no, blowing someone's cover doesn't mean causing an explosion, it means doing something that lets the opposition know that someone is operating under ... why am I explaining this to you?"

"You love the sound of your own voice?" Makie speculated.

"... well, yes, actually, I do," Yuna snapped. "Now do you mind? I'm right in the middle of spying on someone, you know?"

"Isn't that stalking?"

"NO! Not when -" Yuna broke off as she peeped over the top of the bush again. After a few moments of silence, she spoke with what she felt was great calm. "She's gone. When did she go?"

"I dunno. Maybe when someone got dragged behind a bush and made all sorts of rustle rustle noises?" Makie ignored the rather pointed glare she was receiving to push on with her inquiries. "Who's that girl?"

"She's trouble, in a word get closer to the fire," Yuna muttered.

"... huh?"

"I said, she's my dad's other daughter," the girl ground out, getting up from her cramped position. "And that's why I'm not stalking her. You can't stalk family members. That's just obvious."

"... I don't think that's right," Makie mused.

Yuna stopped herself, with difficulty, from telling Negi's youngest aunt, who was also one of her best friends, what she could do with what she thought. "Anything else you want to know?"

"Why are you spying on your big sister?" Makie asked. "Are you trying to drag her into that ... stuff you do with your dad?"

Yuna's eyes narrowed. "How do you know about - wait, no. Let me guess. Tearful confession from Ako?"

Makie nodded soberly."

"Greaaaat," Yuna groaned. "You know everything, huh?"

"Um. Well. No. Not everything." Makie made a great show of staring at her feet for a moment, before she quietly asked, "How does someone get in on this?"

"No," said Chizuru firmly. "Absolutely not."

They'd gathered, as they did every evening, around the round table in the large dining room on the house's main floor, to discuss Ala Alba and Mahora's business like the adults they weren't but had been forced into being. Not everyone was there - Evangeline hardly ever bothered to show up, sending Chachamaru in her place. Yue was also absent, having gone off to deal with something she hadn't even told Nodoka about. Nekane was looking after her son and the other children. And Haruna hadn't sat down at the table, preferring to stand at the dining room's doorway and watch in silence. In particular, she was glancing at Ako, who looked as though she wished she was anywhere else.

"I don't like it either," Yuna answered Chizuru's objections. "It's Makie, after all. But ... well, I mean, it's Makie, after all."

"Setting aside the absolute lack of sense that makes, I'm still utterly opposed. The one thing Arika and I have ever agreed on is that Makie should be allowed to have the innocence we never had -" Chizuru began to lecture.

"Oh, enough," Asuna interjected, sounding disgusted. "Look, Chizuru, you've got to get rid of this exaggerated idea of Maki-chan's innocence, okay? Innocent girls don't peep under the towels of ten year old boys and make comments. I get where you and mom are coming from, but seriously, she's nearly sixteen. Nobody is _that_ innocent at sixteen." She hesitated a second before adding, "You sure weren't."

Chizuru bristled, but Ayaka, sitting beside her, quelled her with a touch of her hand on Chizuru's, then gave Asuna a reproachful look. Ayaka didn't wait for a response, but turned to look at Ako. "Ako," she said, as calmly as she could. "Would you explain how this happened?"

Ako's hand went up to the locket she'd started wearing around her neck as she spoke quietly. "Makie has known ... about me, and Yuna and Akira for a while now." She glanced at Akira, but the taller girl didn't have any reaction to that statement as she sat quietly on the other side of Negi from Asuna. "She never said anything ... but she knew. A few days ago, though, she saw me looking at the picture I keep of Kiri in this locket ... and she asked me who the baby in the picture was ... and I couldn't, couldn't lie to her, and ... I'm sorry," she concluded, weeping quietly.

"Is that what happened with Misa, too?" Asuna asked, after a moment. She wasn't completely indelicate, whatever people might think.

"N-no," Ako stammered. "Then, then I was getting ready to come home after one of our practices, and Saku asked me why I'd moved in with all of you in this big house, and they were just, just _looking_ at me, and ... I couldn't lie to them _either_, and -"

"And the soccer coach?" Chisame asked, sounding annoyed.

"What soccer coach?" Negi asked, sounding baffled.

"I was gonna mention it later," she answered. "Apparently, the soccer coach went to Shizuna about some activities she'd heard about. Shizuna passed it on to me."

"She was just so nice," Ako said, through sobs. "I, I didn't know until later that she has a thing for club managers, and that she was just -"

"Okay, we need to decide what to do about this," Negi groaned, trying to resist the urge to go over and give Ako a soothing hug ... mostly because he knew what was going to happen when he did. Their meetings usually ended up that way anyway, but they had to focus on other stuff right now. "I'm wiling to listen to anyone's options and opinions."

"Anything you decide to do will be fine, master," Akira told him promptly.

"Thank you, Akira, but I want to hear opinions."

"That is my opinion, though."

"I get it."

"We mindwipe the soccer coach and then decide whether Maki-chan and Misa-san can endure that too," Nodoka proposed.

"Is that your solution to everything?" Chisame asked.

"It has worked perfectly well for the magical community for years," Nodoka answered, glaring.

"Not really," said Konoka, sounding a little sharp.

"No," said Asuna. "Not really."

"I don't think it would work here, either," Konoka added. "Maybe with the soccer coach - what's her name, incidentally?"

"Azama Shizuru," Ako hiccupped.

"Maybe with her. But Makie has unconscious use of the Royal Magic - it's why she can sometimes remember flashes of what happened to her when she was under Evangeline's domination, and why she can do things that are physically impossible with her ribbon. She'll use it to undermine whatever we do to her memories. And Misa's ... not normal, either," she concluded with a cute frown.

"Wait. Wait wait wait," Yuna spoke up. "How does being the biggest tramp on campus translate into magical power?"

Konoka arced an eyebrow. "Can any of us really say that about anybody else?"

"When it comes to compensated dating? Yes. Yes we can."

"You have the oddest standards of anyone I've ever met," Chizuru said frankly.

"Backatcha," Yuna replied.

"Anyway," Konoka said, raising her voice in hopes of forestalling another argument. "Asakura's investigations turned up the fact that Misa and her family worship a weird foreign god, and Setchan and I have been able to determine that her religion's practices involve a certain amount of very low-level magic. They're what Arika would call cantrips, and not terribly useful ones, but she can do them ... and looking at her aura, I think she may have had intimate contact with her deity."

"You can tell that from just -" Asuna started to ask.

"'Every contact leaves a trace. Every time one entity comes in contact with another, it takes something from that entity or leaves something behind,'" Negi spoke up. "Locard's Theory applies just as much to magical contacts as it does to material ones."

Konoka nodded. "Sora-san has had contacts with other deities, and I've seen similar things in her aura. The facts fit."

"... that still disturbs me," Chisame growled.

"So then we don't have any choice. We're going to have to bring Misa-san and Makie-san in on this. Probably Sakurako-san and Madoka-san, too," Negi summarized, with a glance at Kotaro.

He just shrugged. "More the merrier."

Natsumi backslapped his head.

"Unless it's not," he promptly added.

"I'll have a talk with Makie-san tomorrow," Negi continued. "Maybe I can persuade her to - okay, stop laughing, you guys."

"I still think you'd be better off sparring with Setsuna," Ku Fei said in Mandarin, as she effortlessly moved her rod to block every darting attack Yue could make.

"Setsuna too much good for me to fight," Yue answered in the same language, conscious that her translation spell was probably not nearly as good as Ayaka's, any more than her healing spells were even close to being the equal of what Konoka could do. That limitation did not stop her from using those spells when Konoka wasn't available, and it wouldn't stop her from taking instruction in a language which her teacher spoke with greater ease.

Now Fei grinned, just a bit savagely. "Oh, and I'm not? I wonder if I should be offended by that!" And without even the slightest warning she brushed Yue's next swordthrust away and drove the ferrule of her staff right up into Yue's breastplate, knocking the other girl off her feet and sending her to land, stunned, several feet away.

For a few moments, Yue actually found herself hearing bird song. _Of course you are, ninny,_ she reminded herself. _We're in the woods!_ She blinked and looked up at Fei, who was standing over her, staff poised to deliver some more blows if any were required, still smiling sweetly. "I," Yue said, then rolled her eyes at how her voice sounded. One cough later, and she was speaking somwhat more clearly. "I concede defeat."

"Oh good!" Fei said cheerfully. "I thought you might be too beat up to do that!"

"Not too proud?" Yue asked as she was helped back to her feet.

"Hah!" laughed Fei. When next she spoke, it was in Japanese. "Yue-chan is Baka Black, smartest of all Baka! Never she that dumb on purpose!"

"Thank you. I think," Yue added, rather dryly.

"So, seriously, why are you sparring with me and not Setsuna?" Fei asked as they started back to the campsite.

"Well, mostly because I meant it when I said she's too much better than I am," Yue explained, momentarily abandoning the attempt to speak in Mandarin, though she kept the translator running. "And she's -" Now she hesitated. "Lately, she's been getting even better ... but she's getting just a bit meaner, too."

"Because she's spending all that time with that crazy girl?" Fei asked.

"Maybe. Partially. The point is, I'm not sure that I'd improve under her teaching, the way I am doing under yours, Ku-roshi." Understatement. She wasn't sure that she'd _survive_ under Setsuna's teaching, the way that she was now.

"Flatterer. Still, you are growing stronger. But, just as I do, you have a long ways to go before you can stand with Negi."

"I'm not so sure I want that anymore," Yue said, then quickly temporized under Fei's shocked look. "I mean, I want to be able to keep up with him, but ... the prospect of being the one who's always at his side just doesn't thrill me like it used to."

"Well, that will probably be Asuna, anyway," Fei said, with a carefree attitude. "But he can always use more help, that boy. You want first bath?" she asked, gesturing at the tub they'd brought along with them, following Kaede's example.

"I think it's big enough for the both of us," Yue said, trying not to speak too quickly.

"Really?" Fei asked dubiously.

"Shouldn't be a problem." After all, there was another reason she'd chosen to train with her instead of Setsuna - novelty.

"Has anyone ever told you that you're beautiful, Fei-roshi?" Yue asked as they sat together in the tub. It was considerably larger than the barrel that Kaede preferred to use, since Ku Fei had no problem rolling a larger metal contraption up into the hills. But it still wasn't so large that they weren't pressed up against one another. So the question went almost right into Fei's ear.

But that's where it seemed to stay for a few moments, as the Chinese girl blinked. Repeatedly. "Um ... no," she answered, at last, in Japanese. "They have not. Some say I'm cute, but that's different, yes?"

Yue shrugged. "I think cuteness is a sequent of true beauty. So is strength. So is character. And you have all three. It's really only glamor that you lack, and it's not a truly essential element."

"Well, thank you," Fei said. She felt a bit of conscience pricking her. While she'd never actually used the term "beauty" or "beautiful", Chao had actually paid her these sorts of compliments quite a bit. Actually, it had usually been under these circumstances, when they were alone together and relaxing after a sparring session. And they'd usually flustered her just like they were doing now, for whatever reason.

Of course, she had to be imagining things. There was no way that Yue would have asked Chao how to chat her up. Since, after all, that wasn't what Yue was doing. And neither had it been what Chao had been doing, even if she had walked in on her at the laboratory while she was giving Hakase a really deep kiss that suggested that they had that sort of relationship.

Why was she thinking about that now?

"You ... do know about Nodoka and I, right?" Yue asked.

Oh! That was why she was thinking about that now! "Um. Sort of yes?" Fei answered. "Is that why you and Bookstore and all those other girls move off campus, so can do that thing with each other in private?" That made sense for Konoka and Setsuna, and probably for Ayaka and Asuna, too. It was a bit harder to justify when it came to Natsumi, though ...

"Sort of yes," Yue answered.

"No you mock me, please," Fei said, frowning.

"Sorry. Um, anyway, that happened, but, well, she and I ... we've been having some problems, for a while now. She ... well, she wants to be with other people, so I guess, maybe I should try that, too. And ... well, you're beautiful, Fei."

Fei was blushing furiously. "W-w-well," she stammered. "That, that very flattering. But, ah ... I have someone I like -"

"You like Negi-sensei."

"Hah, hah ... yeah. Funny that we like same person, yes?" Fei wasn't really sure what she was saying. When she was nervous, she tended to speak more truth than was probably necessary.

"I don't think I like him that way, anymore ... but, well, I do think I could help you to get closer to him. Would you like that?"

Fei's mouth moved without saying anything for a few moments, before she finally, weakly, said, "Yes."

"Okay. Then I'll start helping you ... tomorrow." And then she was no longer even trying to not press up against Fei's body, and she was kissing her way down the other girl's shoulder and breast, pausing there to appreciate the (much) larger globes, before allowing her head to drop below the surface of the water to kiss down the length of Fei's toned stomach while a simple spell took care of her need for oxygen.

"I, I not sure about thiiiiiiiis!" Fei gasped out. _It's probably a bit late to be saying that, though,_ she mused with what little of her brain was still working as she was given oral sex for the first time in her life. At least she could take comfort in knowing that she was giving herself to a fellow warrior ... even if she was fairly sure that Yue's sneaky nature meant that she was the exact opposite of what her family had in mind when they talked about the sort of person they wanted her to land. Even leaving out the whole 'girl' thing.

Eventually, she climaxed, and then Yue's head surfaced again, to kiss her and feed her the taste of herself on the lips.

"Should I -" Fei stammered.

"No. It's okay. It can wait until you really want to," Yue promised.

Fei was fairly sure that Yue was going to be waiting a long, long time for that.

* * *

_The following day, this happened._

Makie found herself sitting, rather nervously, alone in the empty classroom, waiting for Negi to come back as he'd promised he would. Sitting and fidgetting, actually. For some reason, the simple classroom had taken on an air of sensuality, as though some forbidden action was about to occur between teacher and student.  
_  
Yeah, baby!_ Makie thought enthusiastically, grinning like a loon. _No, no, calm down,_ she chided herself a moment later. _I don't want to come on too strong. He probably gets enough of that from ... well, everybody. So I'll just remain calm -_

The door slid open, and Negi entered. "Sorry for keeping you waiting, Makie-san," he started to say.

"That's okay, let's get busy," she said, starting to rise to her feet.

"Cough cough cough," said Chizuru as she came in to the room just behind Negi.

"Eh?" Makie gasped as she felt herself freezing into immobility. "Chizuru-san? What are you doing here?" She looked bewilderedly between Chizuru and Negi. "I, I thought this was going to be a private meeting between the two of us," she added, sounding a bit hurt.

"Well, it was," Negi hastened to agree. "But, well, Chizuru-san insisted -"

"I do that from time to time," Chizuru interjected. "Let's just say that I'm here to keep any more forbidden actions from taking place between a teacher and student." _Not that I seriously expect to prevent it, but I have to at least make the attempt,_ she mused privately as she headed over to sit in the desk beside the one where Makie was presently frozen in mid-standing up.

Makie made a face at her when she thought she couldn't see. _Bleep bleep you, you bleeping bleep!_ she thought. _Probably having all sorts of bleeping fun with Negi-kun yourself, but -_

Now Negi coughed, drawing her attention back to him. "Well, then," he said. "Let's get right to the point. Makie-san ... you know about what's been going on between me and, well, quite a few of your classmates, right?"

Makie nodded firmly. "Yes, Ako-chan told me all about it, and I want in. I've always, always liked you, Negi-kun, and I -"

"Yes, yes, thank you," Negi interjected. "I appreciate your honesty and your feelings, Makie-san. But ... well, I don't think that Ako really did tell you everything. There are parts of it that she doesn't like to think about, and ... basically, there are some sides to it that really won't make you very happy, I think."

"Oh, come on," she said with a a cheerful laugh. "How bad could it possibly be?"

* * *

"Wow," she said a few moments later, as she stared at the family tree that Negi had drawn on the blackboard at the head of the class. "That's really, really, really bad."

Negi looked at it, looked away again, and just nodded.

"So ... you're telling me that my papa isn't really my papa, and that this Alladia person, who is Negi-kun's grandpa, is my real papa?" she asked. "... how did that happen?"

"We don't know," Chizuru admitted. "I suspect that he probably molested your mother, just like he did mine. But the details probably died with him. That's probably for the best, I think."

"Do you think my mama knows?" Makie asked, hesitantly.

"Maybe. I don't think it would be wise or kind to bother her with this," Chizuru said, remembering the hatred in her own mother's eyes the last time they'd spoken. She hadn't believed her, not about anything. Or perhaps the loathing she'd felt for her employers had finally attached itself to the ultimate product of her interactions with them. "No. Not wise at all."

There was a hand on hers. Chizuru looked down at it, then looked up at Makie, leaning across the aisle to offer her comfort. "Please don't cry, oneesama," she said softly.

"I'm not crying," she said. For this was true. Whatever else she might think about Arika, the woman had the right idea when it came to controlling one's expressed emotions. She would not cry, except when she and Ayaka were alone together.

Which didn't happen very often anymore.

"I always wanted a big sister," Makie continued to speak in that same gentle, soothing tone. "It's nice having a little brother, but big sisters are the best. Akira used to be like a big sister, but lately ..." She trailed off, shook her head. Pulling back, she looked at Negi.

"This doesn't change anything. I still want in," she said.

"Makie-san, no," Negi groaned.

She was walking patiently toward where he was standing, face calm and set. "Negi-kun, I'm not a little girl, all right? I made up my mind a while ago. You are a brave, handsome, and very sweet boy. You are the every little thing that a girl dreams of. All this ... stuff, about you being my nephew ... I don't see any point in dwelling on it. It's too crazy. And for your part, you're with your sisters and your mother, so I don't get what problem you can have with it. And if someone as sweet and good as you isn't bothered by it, why should I be?"

Now she was standing before him, smiling sweetly down at him. "I love you, Negi-kun. It doesn't matter if it doesn't go anywhere. I want you to be my first time. Right here. Right now." And then she scooped him up in an embrace, holding him tightly against her as she pressed their lips together. Negi hung limply in her arms for a moment, before he brought his arms up to wrap around her shoulders as he began to kiss her back.

Chizuru watched this for a moment, then sighed as she got up herself. "Well, then, I'll leave you two to it," she said as she started towards the door.

"Hweh?" Makie said, pulling away from Negi for a moment. "You don't have to go. I don't mind."

"... leaving that aside, I don't feel comfortable sitting around and watching people having sex," Chizuru said, without looking at them.

"... you don't have to just watch," Makie said, still in that baffled tone. "You can join in. I don't mind."

"I don't -" Chizuru said, just a bit sharply.

"Chizuru-san and I haven't ever done anything," Negi finally spoke up from where Makie was still holding him. She was really quite surprisingly strong, but then he'd already been aware of that.

Now Makie blinked, almost as rapidly as she turned to look between Chizuru and Negi. "Eh?" she said. "Eh? Ehhhhh? But, but -"

"I care very deeply about Negi-kun, but he is not my passion," Chizuru explained, as she stood at the door. "I ... I really should be going ..."

"But!" Makie protested, then hesitated, before going into a whine. "I don't know what I'm doing! All the movies and comics I've read fade out at this point, and I don't know what I'm supposed to do now!"

"It's all right, Makie-san, we don't actually have to do anything!" Negi said, rather hopefully.

"No, no, I want to! I just don't know how it goes, and, and ..." Sniffle, sniffle. "... it would really be a lot easier if, if, you know, if I had a cool big sister to show me what I'm supposed to be doing, so I don't really mess things up, and ..." She trailed off, looking at the ground in obvious shame.  
_  
Oh, good grief,_ thought Chizuru as she looked at Makie. _That was the most transparently manipulative display I've seen since Ayaka was thirteen._ A sigh followed as she looked around, briefly remembering the last time she'd fooled around in this classroom. _... oh, _why_ must I find such things completely irresistible? I should know better by now! Ah well._

"All right," she said aloud. "I'll help you."

"Really?" Makie asked, lifting her eyes from the ground to look at her hopefully. Tears were almost trickling from her eyes.

"Yes, really," Chizuru growled, further annoyed by how sincere the girl was acting. Was there anything more manipulative than sincerity?

A few moments later, Negi found himself lying on his back across his desk, as Makie and Chizuru kissed deeply above him while Makie, following wordless directions from Chizuru, got his pants open. He wished he was more surprised at how things had worked out.

The pants opened up, and Makie gasped. "Ah! It got bigger! And it's getting even bigger now!"

Chizuru forced herself to refrain from laughing at the rather mortified expression on Negi's face. It wasn't easy to do; the fact that he could still be embarrassed by such things after all that he'd done and had done to him was both endearing and appealing to her sense of the absurd. She couldn't stop smiling, though, and did so as she ran a hand down Makie's spine and whispered into her ear. "Now, you should apologize to the poor boy for embarrassing him like that, and to do that, you should -"

"Ooh, I know this part!" Makie proclaimed - then swooped down to start huffing and puffing, blowing air on every part of Negi's cock.

Chizuru just stared for a moment, amazed by Makie's unique combination of innocence and experience. "Maki-chan," she said at last. "That's not really how you give a blowjob."

"Eh?" Makie asked. "But, I mean ... _blow_job." She blew again to demonstrate.

Headache coming on, Chizuru continued. "That's part of it, but you're really supposed to use your tongue -"

"I do, that's how I shape the -"  
_  
How can someone be so smart and so dumb?_ she thought despairingly - then glanced at Negi and decided that was a silly question. "More directly than that. Licking, is what I'm saying."

"Oh! Why didn't you say so?" Before Chizuru could observe, just a bit angrily, that she _had_, Makie unhesitatingly bent down to take Negi's dick in her mouth and begin moving her head back and forth, tongue flickering out as she did so, to lick at his ballsack.

After a moment of dazed observation of this, Chizuru shook her head and moved up so that her face was beside Negi's, allowing her to watch it from much the same vantage as him.

"I'm sorry, Chizuru-san," he murmured to her. "Sorry for you getting dragged into this -"

"It's all right, Negi-kun," she murmured back. "Anything I can do to help you, I will. You are ... precious to me." Not her passion, but the passion of the one whom she still loved, helplessly and unrequitedly ... and also her sweet little nephew. On a whim, she kissed his forehead. He blushed, but said nothing. On another whim, all the while berating herself inwardly, her face came lower, and she stole a short peck at Negi's lips. "Sorry about that," she excused herself. "I ... I don't know what came over me."

"It's, it's okay, I've done far worse ... I mean, not that this was -"

"Fufufu," Makie snickered as she looked up at the two of them with what she no doubt thought was a sly expression while she rubbed Negi's dick firmly. "I think someone wants this just as much as _I_ do." Before Chizuru could say anything to her about how much she was mistaken, Makie's 'sly' grin grew broader as she began to rise up. "But I've got dibses!"

"It's dibs," Negi said faintly. "The noun is automatically plural, like -"

"Don't care!" Makie said, dismissing the educational component of the evening's entertainment with airy disregard as she slid her hips over Negi's hips - and then slammed down taking his cock inside of her with a squeal of delight. "Oh yes!" she cried, hands on her tiny tits, as she started to pump up and down. "This is great! This! Is! GREAT! This is better than ... uh, anything! Fuck me, fuck me!"  
_  
What an odd thing to say,_ Negi thought faintly. _But then it's Makie-sa- Makie, after all._

"Uh-huh, uh-huh!" she gasped as she bent forward, leaning down to capture the nipple of Chizuru's left breast in her teeth. "Mmmm! Greaaaat! And now you're gonna cum inside of me, right, Negi-kuuun? And I'm gonna get pregnant so I can have big breasts like Yuna and Akira and even _Ako_, and smile all the time like they do, um, yes yes yes! And oneesama too!"  
_  
She wants to get pregnant so that her breasts will grow?_ Chizuru thought, jaw loose. _What ... how ... how can anyone_ be _so decadent?!_ She started to say something to object.

Negi made a certain, by now quite familiar noise.  
_  
Too late,_ Chizuru thought disgustedly.

"Ahhhhhh!" Makie cried out as her insides were painted with white. "Ohhh, sooo goooood! Ah! Negi-kun is still hard, too! Oneeeesamaaaaa? It's your turn!"

"Wait," said Chizuru, as she felt Makie reaching out to gently caress and pull at her hips. "I'm still not sure -"

"Ah, come onnn," Makie said wistfully, as she continued to shift Chizuru's body so that her vulva moved ever closer to Negi's phallus. "Don't you want to share experiences with your cute little sister?"

"I'm fairly sure that this isn't the sort of experience sisters are supposed to share with each other!"

"Negi's sisters do," Makie observed brightly as she decided that she didn't want to risk serious resistance from the older girl, and so turned her efforts to moving Negi's wearier body.

"That's not - ahhh!" Chizuru continued to protest right up until the moment she felt herself being penetrated. She gave a sour look at Negi, who only smiled sheepishly up at her. Shaking her head as her hips began to move almost independently of her will - _almost_ independently - Chizuru looked back at Makie. "You are entirely too much like our older sister," she said. "She always gets me to do things I don't -"

"You think I'm like Asuna?" Makie said, stars dancing in her eyes.

"No, our - never mind. Although actually - hhhhnggggh," Chizuru's first orgasm cut off her wry observation that, yes, she did think Makie was almost as stupidly cute as Asuna. At least she had the comfort of knowing that Ayaka didn't have any romantic inclinations towards Makie ... as far as she knew.  
_  
Oh, what a depressing thought._

As Negi pumped up into Chizuru, Makie watched fondly and rubbed herself as she sat in his chair. She was a little bit jealous that she hadn't had any of the body-shaking pleasure that Chizuru seemed to be experiencing from Negi fucking her, only the immense emotional satisfaction she'd felt from his boyjuice shooting up into her to help her breasts grow.

Still, there'd be time for that, now that she was in her sweet little nephew's harem. Best of all, she'd be able to get closer to her old friends, too!

She smiled at how silly she'd been, when she'd found Akira-chan, Yuna-chan, and Ako-chan together and run away like a scared little girl. If she'd known then what she knew now, she'd have been in that shower and down on her knees in front of Akira-chan like ... like ... ah, what was really really fast? A cheetah! Yeah, she'd have gone down on her like a cheetah! That would surely have prevented her from going all weird and cool like she had. Well, she would fix that now. And she'd be able to be with all the Baka Rangers ... oooh, that was a fun thought.

But there were other thoughts, slightly sadder ones, on her mind as well. It hadn't been all that difficult to pretend to be surprised by the 'revelations' Negi and Chizuru had given her, since she had really been surprised to learn that her mother had been molested by that Alladia person. That hadn't been any part of what Kimiko had told her, a couple of weeks ago when she'd met the other girl, who could read minds and knew what she was thinking, and knew all sorts of other things, too. Unlike her old friends, Kimiko told Makie everything, in between bouts of showing her why they liked that sort of thing.

Makie smiled at the memory of the other pink-haired girl's mouth down between her legs in the shower after her club. But then she shook her head. She needed to think about her mama right now. Her mom had always seemed to cheerful and happy, just like Makie herself. But if _that_ had happened to her, she must be hiding a terrible secret pain. It was up to Makie to do something to make her mama happy!

Hey! That was a great idea! She'd have Negi fuck her mama! After all, he fucked his own mama, so he shouldn't have any objection to hers, who was still cute and sweet, right?

Oh. But that made her feel sorry for her not-papa. So she'd have to fuck him! After all, he was a pretty handsome guy, even if he wasn't her papa. Maybe she could get some tips from Yuna-chan about how to do it. Or even get her to join in on it. But Tatsuro-chan was off limits for Yuna-chan. If she felt like it, Makie would fuck her brother alone. Well ... she might let her sisters have some fun with him ...

That finally brought on the orgasm, just as Negi spilled his seed into Chizuru. _Ah, bliss,_ Makie thought.

* * *

That evening, a pink-haired girl in black lingerie sat in a darkened room awaiting a phone call that eventually came. "Moshi moshi," she said politely as she answered.

"Kimiko-chan!" a cheerful voice came from the phone. "I did it! I had sex with Negi-kun and I'm pretty sure that I'm pregnant!"

"That's wonderful news, Maki-chan," she said, and meant every word. "I'm sure that you'll have a very easy pregnancy."

"I hope so! Um, so, I'm going to be busy with my old friends, but I really do want to see you again, real soon now. When can I see you again?"

"About nine months from now," Kimiko said, smiling.

"Eh? But I want to see you sooner than that!"

"Oh, okay," Kimiko said, with an air of great reluctance. "Tell me, though, did Chizuru-san also have sex with Negi-kun?"

"Yeah!" Makie's voice said, sounding amazed at Kimiko's seeming omniscience. "How did you know -"

"Bit of a fey quality, I suppose," she said, running her hand through the light brown hair of the boy down between her legs - gently brushing her fingers over his lobotomy scar. "I'll be seeing you soon, Makie-chan," she assured her, as she hung up. "We both got conceived today," she told her half-brother with a smile. "Won't our Master be happy?"

He mumbled something, both because his mouth was occupied and because speech was all-but impossible for him. But she took it for agreement. Not that she cared.

* * *

_Later that same day, this happened._

Negi walked home alone as he usually did, very tired after a long day at work, which - as such things sometimes did - felt more like a couple of weeks than a day. Something about relativity that Satomi had said, about sitting on a hot iron for a minute feeling like an hour, buzzed momentarily through his head.

Still, it felt good to be tired, or so he told himself. It meant that he'd done a good day's work, or so he told himself. The fact that he really felt tired because of the amatory encounter he'd had with Makie and Chizuru was something of a flaw in his reconstruction of reality, so he ignored it, as he looked forward to a pleasant, restful evening at home.

Then he reached the point at which he could hear the sound of raised voices resounding from the house, and came to a halt as he sighed and listened to the argument, bidding farewell to those dreams.

Not for the first time, he found himself contemplating the notion of just ... turning his back on all of this, and walking away. Not for the first time, he forced himself to stop thinking in that direction. He had chosen to walk a different path from his father, and a large part of that was his determination to be there for his own children far more than his father had been there for ... for _any_ of his children.

Or his mother, for that matter. Or _any_ of their mothers, really. Yuna had fond memories of her mother, Satomi got along with hers ... it hadn't been Ayaka's mother's fault, or Yue's ... and ... shaking his head, he continued to walk to the house. A perceptive person, however, would have noticed that he was moving more slowly than he had been before.

He sighed again as he laid hands on the door, and hesitated before opening it. But he did so, and actually got to announce, "Tadaima," before the wave of sound finally struck him. It appeared, he noted somewhat dispassionately, to be a three on three argument this time, with three less-than-familiar voices raised against three much more familiar ones.

Almost immediately, Asuna ran into the vestibule with an embarrassed and angry look on her face. "Negi, I'm sorry!" she cried out. "This wasn't supposed to happen!"

"It never is," he said mildly. "What -"

"Hey, great!" Misa declared as she followed closely on Asuna's heels, with Madoka and Sakurako following her in turn. "You're here! Maybe now we can get some answers and these wenches will -"

"Stop calling us wenches!" Nodoka and Chisame chorused as they came into view behind them.

Negi blinked.

"So what gives?" Misa asked of Negi. "Asuna said it was going to be okay for us to come over, but now -"

"Asuna doesn't make decisions for the household like that!" Nodoka interjected.

"Damn right she doesn't!" Chisame agreed.

"You got them to agree on something," Negi said, amazed, to Misa.

"Great, they agree that I can take a hike!"

"You do have that effect on people," Madoka opined.

"Cram it, Kugimii! That wouldn't bother me, but Asuna's saying that we oughta leave too!" Misa explained to Negi. "What gives?"

"Things changed, that's what gives!" Asuna finally got a word in. "Negi, mom's here! She said -"

"What I said," Arika announced, just a little bit louder than anyone else was speaking as she patiently stepped into the vestibule with a deep frown on her face, "was that I wanted to speak privately with Negi before any other matters were addressed. I suspect that the 'privately' was always going to be a foolish dream, but so it goes."

Negi started at the sight of his mother, forcing himself not to remember the rather critical thoughts he had just a few minutes ago been thinking about her. He suspected that some of them showed on his face regardless, considering the way that she was looking at him without even the faint smile with which she usually favored him when she made one of her rare visits home. "Mother, what is it?" he asked, becoming alarmed. "What's the matter?"

"Negi. I've found your father," she said.

Dead silence fell in the foyer.

"Wh-where -" he began to ask.

"I'm sorry, Negi," she said. "He's gone."

There was an extended silence. Even Misa had the sense not to break it, and Madoka's hand was firmly over Sakurako's mouth.

"By gone," Negi finally started to say, in a quiet and very, very calm voice, "you of course mean that he's no longer in the place where you found him, having by this point moved somewhere else like the merry prankster that he is."

"No, Negi, that's not what -" Arika started to say.

"Because there is no way that you could possibly be saying what you seem to be saying, and I must be misunderstanding you," Negi continued in that very, very, very calm tone. "I am such an idiot, aren't I, Asuna?"

"Negi -" Asuna started to say.

"You are not an idiot," Arika interrupted without a glance at her eldest daughter. "You are not misunderstanding me. Negi, I am more sorry than you can imagine. But there is no mistake. When I found your father, he was no longer alive. I will take you to the grave that I -"

"When?" Negi bit out.

A slight hesitation before Arika spoke told him that what she was about to say was not the whole truth, almost as much as the words themselves did. "I don't understand what you're asking."

"How long ago had he -" Words failed him as the tears began to flow.

"I'm not certain," she answered. "This is not ... a few months," she abruptly said, as she realized how close he was to an outburst. "Perhaps more, perhaps less. I'm not a pathologist, Negi."

"Who?" he asked then.

"No one," she told him. "He was alone in the place where I found him. There had been no one else present for quite some time, I believe. He died of negligence, not anyone's malice, Negi."

And then she saw comprehension dawn in his eyes, and knew that she had said too much. "It was a prison, wasn't it? Like the one where we found you."

She was not married to the notion of truth, but he deserved it, and so despite her better judgement, she gave it to him. "Yes, but in this world, not -"

"And he died around the time that we took you out of that place, didn't he?" he demanded, the words coming more quickly now.

"We can't know that -" Arika answered.

"But we can work it out, can't we?!" Negi yelled. "We rescued you, and the people who were holding him abandoned him to his fate. If we'd gone looking immediately, we'd have found him, rescued him, none of this would have -"

"Negi!" Chisame interjected. "Stop second-guessing yourself!" She winced inwardly as she realized that she was basically telling him to stop breathing, but pressed on regardless. "Nobody thinks this is your fault!"

"_Then everyone else is wrong!_" he shouted, with enough force behind his voice to make everyone else present step back. He blinked as he realized what he'd just done, and opened his mouth, as though to stammer out an apology. What came out instead, though, were the words, "I ... I need ... to be ... alone ... now."

And with that, he dashed into the house, disappearing up the stairs.

"We've got to get after him -" Nodoka cried.

"We don't got to do that!" Chisame snapped. "This is his house, he hasn't run off into the night or something stupid like that!"

"Excuse me?" said Asuna, who had run off into the night a few times.

"Sit on it," Chisame advised her. "Look, let's just give him some space for a while. He's probably going to go off and do that crying alone thing that he managed to learn from someone who wasn't even around when he was growing up."

"I am standing right here, Chisame," Arika said irritably.

"Y'know, maybe we should come back some other time," Madoka offered, starting to press Misa and Sakurako in the direction of the door.

"Screw that noise!" Misa snapped. "I want in on the comfort part of this hurt/comfort crap!"

* * *

In his darkened room, Negi's sobs had finally run their course, and he lay face down on the bed feeling empty and horribly alone.

His single driving goal through his brief life to this point had been to find his father. The motive for that goal had varied. At first, he had simply wanted to be with the man who had, in the end, appeared from nowhere to rescue him from the danger he'd brought on himself. Then he'd wanted to show his father just how much he'd grown, and learned and mastered. And at last, he'd wanted to show the man that he was in many ways his better.

But none of that mattered, for in the end, he'd failed ... and worse, at his own nadir, when he'd been entirely focused on becoming a "better man" than his father, the man who'd rescued him had been in need of rescue himself. And Negi had failed to do so. An utter, utter failure.

Soon, he knew, someone would come along to tell him that he was wrong, that he was not a failure. He was looking forward to arguing the point, inasmuch as he could look forward to something right at the moment.

Behind him, he heard the door open, and footsteps slowly approaching the bed, which creaked as someone sat down on its edge, not far from where he lay. But he didn't look up. Not even when a gentle, feminine hand reached out to rub the back of his head like someone might pet a dog.

"You have to do better, you know," said an unfamiliar voice.

_Now_ he looked up, startled. In the dim, starlit room, it was hard to make out the features of the woman, dressed in a long black coat, who was sitting beside him. Once he recognized them, he was only more confused - for his mother had been wearing one of the sweaters and skirts that she favored, not a long black coat, when he saw her last, and yet this was clearly her. But just before he said that, he glanced up at her hair, which was as red as his own.

"... Anarchia-chan?" he said, almost breathlessly.

The woman smiled. "I always liked that name, much better than Arika Junior. I never cared for the way our mother used that one," said his sister-daughter, who was, as far as he knew, sleeping quietly with her half-siblings in the nursery, below the house. And was only a few months old, not this beautiful, older woman.

"You've time travelled," Negi said aloud. "Like Chibi-Asu, and Chao."

She nodded. "Just like Chao, actually," she said, producing a pocket watch from within the coat. He recognized it at once as a Cassiopeia.

"But I thought that was only supposed to work when the World Tree -"

"There have been improvements," Anarchia interrupted. She looked sad to have done so. "Forgive me, Father, but we have only a little time. My arrival will likely have been noticed."

"By whom?" he asked, tensing up.

"By our enemy. I cannot tell you much about them, but they are the ones responsible for what happened to Mother and Grandfather. The longer I am here, the more that they will be able to do in response. As with chess, each side can make a move."

She bent down to look deeply into his eyes with her bi-colored ones. "You must not give into despair, father. Not now and not in the hard times to come. There is much to be done between now and then. You must gather allies - allies bound to you by the closest and most intimate of ties - if you are to have any chance of triumphing over our enemy." She sighed. "Again, I cannot tell you much about them. There is not enough time. All that I can tell you is that Aunt Yuna is the key. She will tell you what needs to be done, but it falls to you to understand it, and then do it."

"I understand," he said. "That is, I think I do." He reached up to cup her chin in his hand. "Thank you, dear one, for telling me that there _is_ hope for the future."

Tears filled her eyes. "Oh, father, father," she said. "There is so much I want to tell you."

And abruptly, they were kissing, deeply, and he was pulling her down onto the bed with him -

She jerked back. "No," she said, breathing heavily. "It is not time for this." With obvious reluctance, she stood up and moved away from the bed.

"But -" Negi protested.

"There will be another time," she said, making it a promise, as she backed towards the door. "There will." Anarchia opened the door, and started at what she saw there. Then she smiled. "And your time will come as well, Aunt Eva."

"Who the bloody hell are you to be calling me -" sounded Evangeline's voice from the hallway outside. But before she could even finish that sharp inquiry, Anarchia lifted the Cassiopeia, clicked it, and disappeared before Negi's eyes.

Almost instantly, Evangeline stormed in, dressed in a nightgown and a furious expression. "BOY!" she yelled. "You told me this place was warded against teleporters! You told me no one could get in here without using the door! What was that, then?"

"I don't know how to create wards against time travellers, Master," Negi said, reflexively reverting to their older mode of address. He flinched once the word left his lips, as he saw that it was only making her angrier.

"Time travel isn't - all right, so it clearly is, but -" She broke off, seeming almost on the verge of descending into snarling incoherence, but calming herself before that happened. "Why did you waste time sucking face instead of pressing her for more information about this vaguely hinted-at enemy?" she finally demanded.

"You heard that?" Negi asked, flushing.

"Don't answer questions with questions! Who do you think you are, Socrates?!"

"I didn't press her," he replied, forcing himself to calm down, "because I could tell that she was telling the truth about not being able to tell me about the enemy."

"You could tell she was telling the truth," Evangeline said, scornfully "_You_."

"Yes, me," Negi said irritably. "She's my daughter, Evangeline-san! If you can't trust your own children, who can you trust?"

Evangeline stared at him in silence for a few moments. "Your daughter," she eventually said.

"Yes, she was -"

"Your time travelling daughter with whom you were just now making out," Evangeline said, growing visibly annoyed.

"Ummmm ..." Negi temporized.

It didn't help. "You - you -" Evangeline bit out, then snarled while holding her head as though it were in pain. "GAHRARGH! Your mother and your sisters and your bloody _aunts_ weren't enough for you, you have to go _there_, too?"

"It, it was ... just one of those things!" he said.

"A trip to the moon on gossamer wings?" Evangeline growled.

"Not exactly, but, I mean, she didn't exactly - why are you so angry all of a sudden?" Negi finally asked.

"You're right!" Evangeline replied, in feigned astonishment. "Just because I came here to offer you comfort in light of that news, and find my efforts superfluous, I shouldn't be angry! I should be happy that someone else is giving you the good cheer you clearly need. That would be the selfless thing to do! Except, oh wait, I'm not selfless, I'm a selfish bitch, remember?!" That last was yelled.

Abruptly, hands were on her shoulders and Negi was staring into her face angrily. "No, you're not! Stop saying bad things about someone I care about!" And once again, before either of them really knew what was happening, they were clinging to each other tightly.

"He's really gone, isn't he?" she asked quietly after a moment.

"Yes. It seems that way," he answered.

"I never got to kick his ass the way he deserved to have it kicked."

He would have laughed, except it hurt too much.

"So now what?" she asked after another moment.

"... now we start planning how to fight back," he answered.

When at last they both felt calm enough to continue, they left the room to find Nekane standing in the hallway outside the room, holding her baby Nigel in her arms. While most of the girls tried to find time to care for their infants - with one or two exceptions - Nekane was noteworthy for positively doting on hers, to the point where she rarely bothered with the nannies.

She was also noteworthy for usually getting very nervous around Evangeline, despite the fact that she was well-aware that the ex-vampire had been rendered powerless. While Nekane claimed that it was just a lingering memory of childhood horror stories about the Dark Evangel, Negi suspected that it might have more to do with whatever had passed between the two of them on that day, months ago, that neither of them were able to remember.

But whatever the cause, right at the moment, that anxiety was nowhere in evidence. There was only obvious sorrow to be seen on her face, to the point where it almost set him off again as he was reminded that he wasn't the only one to mourn. "Are you all right, Nekane?" he asked her.

She shook her head. "I don't think I ever really will be, Negi," she answered. "Are you?"

"The same," he answered, without even the hint of a smile.

"What are you going to do?" she asked.

What was he going to do? It was funny, really. He suspected that most boys his age, if they learned that their father was dead, wouldn't be doing anything. They'd be given time to mourn, to grieve ... and then, most likely, be expected to resume their routine. But he knew that he wasn't most boys his age. He'd always known that.

"Well, right now, I'm going to go downstairs and tell everyone what I've decided to do," he said at last. "I'd really rather not repeat myself, so why don't you and Nigel come down with us?"

She nodded agreement. "Would you like to hold him?" she said, offering Nigel to him.

"He seems happy enough where he is," he said, feeling more than a bit of envy over how happy that was, to be honest.

* * *

"All right," Negi said a few moments later, as he stood in the middle of the family room with all of his harem, even Tsukuyomi, who was patiently sitting on the floor in front of Setsuna, who held the leash of her collar in one hand while her other was on Konoka's shoulder. There were also a few newcomers - Ku Fei was looking at Tsukuyomi with a faintly disturbed expression, but she was the only one who looked that way - the cheerleaders didn't seem to notice.

"Mother," he said to Arika, who was seated with Asuna, Chizuru and Makie, holding her youngest sister's hand. "You said that you could take me to the grave that you made for him. When can we leave?"

"If need be, we can go at once. It will be trivial to go there and back again with Chizuru's ability," Arika answered. "Will -"

"No," he answered firmly. "We will wait for the weekend, because I'm going to need a lot of time for this. And you should rest," he added as an afterthought.

Before she could answer that, Negi had changed topics. "Satomi, how are you at forensic pathology?"

"... I wouldn't rate myself expert, but I have contacts who are. Are you proposing -" the scientist started to ask, then broke off when she saw him nod in anticipation of the question. "I see."

"I want to be sure," he said. "Very sure." Whoever their enemy was, there was bound to be a trace there that could lead them to him ... or to whichever cutout was responsible, and from there to the one responsible for them, and so on, and so on.

Preparing for the enemy was only half the battle, though. Recalling what Anarchia had said about Yuna, he turned to look at her, as she sat with Akira and Ako. "Yuna, what is happening with your sister?" _Allies bound by the closest of bonds_, she'd said.

Kugimiya Madoka had never read H.P. Lovecraft, nor any of his imitators in either English or Japanese. Scary stories were not even remotely to her taste. So the notion of going mad from the revelation was foreign to her - and yet, now, suddenly familiar. For she felt like she was about on the verge of doing so, and running shrieking into the night, never to be seen nor heard from again.

The fact that the cute young man with whom she'd enthusiastically coupled a few weeks ago was not, in fact, her own age, but about Negi's or possibly a little older, was just the icing on the cake. That he and Negi between them had fathered children on more than half of the class - well, technically, that was mostly on Negi, she was given to understand - was far more disturbing, as was the news that Negi was related to a good portion of the girls who had coupled with him and borne his children.

Madoka was not a prude. She had been getting it on since she was thirteen, having given it up in what she later learned was a right of passage for newbie members of the cheerleader team. She had gotten used to the notion that she liked people for who they were, not which bits came attached to them. But all of this was a little more than she could take.

There was also the magic crap that everyone seemed to be taking so casually, but since nobody else seemed all that het up about it, she decided not to be either. It might have been different when it came to the sex part, since she could see that Ku Fei and Haruna seemed a bit freaked out about everything too. She might have taken comfort in that, actually, if they hadn't been Ku (baka martial artist and Chinese girl) and Saotome (pervert, groper and fujoshi). How could she possibly take comfort in being just like two girls like that?

At least things seemed to be winding down for the evening, and not in the way that Misa had expected, judging from the faint scowl that she didn't bother to hide when Negi finally turned to speak to her. "Well, Misa-san, I'm very sorry that all this had to happen on the night you and your friends came to visit."

"Uh-huh," she said heavily.

"And it's already gotten dark. So if you're concerned about getting back to the dorms safely, you're all more than welcome to spend the night here. We have plenty of spare rooms."

"That's really nice of you, Negi-kun," Misa said, thawing a little. "But there won't be any trouble getting back, if we travel in a group. And I'm sure that Fei-san will be with us, right?" she asked, without even a glance in the other girl's direction.

"Oh yes," said Fei, nodding rapidly.

"Aww," groaned Makie. "We're gonna have to put off the Baka Rangers Reunion Sleepover, then?"

Madoka watched Fei's cheeks grow even darker than usual as the girl blush while Kaede, seated beside her, visibly smothered a chuckle. But that reminded her, and she decided to remind Misa, as one sometimes had to do, that she and Sakurako were not her drones. (Well, that _she_ wasn't, at least.) "Um, actually, I think I'll be staying here," she said. "I've got that, you know, thing, in town, tomorrow morning, and it'll be easier to go there, tomorrow morning, direct from here." She nodded rapidly.

"Ah yes," Misa said, rather blandly, with a glance in Ako's direction. "That _thing_. Well, be sure and take care of that thing."

Sakurako was giving her that "you are tearing us apaaaaart" look that she'd gotten pretty good at lately, but Madoka was able to ignore it this time. She was going to pay for this later, but right now, she had to talk to the girl she still dreamed about from time to time.

A few hours later, Madoka volunteered to help with the dishes after dinner and so found herself alone in the kitchen with Akira. Something about her seemed off to Madoka, but she didn't really know her well enough to say for certain what it was. _Well,_ she thought, a bit embarrassedly, _that's not really true. I 'know' her. I have 'known' her. But ... well ..._

"So who decides who does the dishes?" she asked abruptly while drying a plate.

"We have a rotating schedule of chores," Akira answered without looking up from the glass she was washing out. "But I actually traded tonight's dish duty with Yue."

"For her sidewalk shovelling duties when it finally starts snowing?" Madoka wisecracked, envisioning tiny Yue looking very piteous as she tried to push a show through a unlikely-large-for-the-area snow drift.

"No, for her hour of private time with our master later," Akira answered without hesitation.  
_  
And there's the elephant in the room,_ Madoka thought as she almost but didn't _quite_ drop the plate. "That's, that's a chore?" she asked weakly.

Akira shook her head without looking away from the plates. "It was decided that it would be unfair to trade off chores for other chores, as some forms of labor are inherently distasteful and everyone would seek to get out of them. Instead, chores are traded for privileges, most significantly private time with our master."

"... it's sort of creepy hearing you talk about him that way, you know."

"Sorry for being creepy." It was said very perfunctorily, so as to clearly state that the onus of the problem was entirely on the one it affected. Akira had never talked like that before all this.

"D-do any of the others call him that?"

"I don't really think about things like that," Akira failed utterly to answer the question. Scrub scrub scrub, her hands went.

"Does Ako call him that?" Madoka asked at last.

"I don't think so, but I don't really think about what Ako does or doesn't do."

Madoka set down the plate, very carefully, before turning to Akira and grabbing her by the shoulder. "What the fuck _happened_ to you?" she asked, anger and confusion and not-well-hidden horror all blending together in her voice.

Now Akira, in her turn, paused in her washing, and turned to meet Madoka's gaze. She didn't look angry, though - more puzzled than anything else. "I'm not sure what you mean by that question. If I have angered you -"

"I don't - you don't think about what Ako does or doesn't do?" Madoka repeated, incredulous. "And you don't see anything odd about that?"

"Ako is my friend, but she has her own life," Akira answered, still sounding puzzled. "I don't think I need -"

"Akira!" Madoka interrupted. "Do you really not remember a conversation we had? Just a few months ago? Do you not remember how it ended? Don't you remember how much you loved Ako? You said, 'I will never lose her to you'! That - I can't even start to replicate what you did with your voice when you said that! I mean, I was your rival, but - holy shit, girl, what _happened_ to you?"

Akira slowly blinked.

And then, just as slowly, she turned to look down at the sink where they were washing the dishes. "Do you know where the water goes when you empty out the sink?" she asked.

Madoka's eyes were right on the verge of bulging out of their sockets. "Into the sewer! What the hell does that have to do with anything?"

"Into the sewer," Akira repeated. "Through a long channel to a waste treatment plant, to get stripped of all its impurities, so that it can be safely used to create wetlands, and eventually reused to water plants elsewhere. And once it does all that, there's a tiny bit of it that seeps through the cracks in pipes and flows through the earth in tiny channels to the sea."

She reached down into the sink, holding her hand on the plug of the drain. "I can hear them, singing, there. Through all that, I can hear them singing. It would be so, so easy to just ... let go ... to let myself flow down to them ..."

It came to Madoka, very suddenly, that Akira was looking very green around the gills - no, she realized, not just there. green all over. For a moment, she almost thought that the girl was about to turn completely green - and it occurred to her that Akira had somehow grown much, much larger. As though she was expanding ...

No. As though she was exploding.

And then, it was over, and there was just the tall girl she'd come to know. "But I won't," she said. "Because I love my master. And even though I _do_ remember what I said, what I felt, the first time I heard the Voice of Ocean speaking through me, it's not ... not really important, when compared to how I feel about my master.

"I understand that it might be a bit hard for you to understand -" she added, as an afterthought, but Madoka was already running, out of the kitchen, _away_ from her, as fast as she could -

But her headlong dash took her into someone's arms, waiting in the dining room as though lurking just to catch her. "Ssssh," said Konoka as she caught Madoka. "It's all right, be not afraid."

By the time that Konoka had Madoka calmed down, the pair of them were seated together on the couch in the house's main sitting room, facing the large bay window that afforded them a view of the street leading up to the house - or would have, if the night wasn't pitch black. (_How apropos,_ Madoka thought vaguely.)

"What happened to her?" Madoka finally asked.

"It's complicated," Konoka finally answered. "By which I mean," she added quickly, when it looked as though Madoka was going to object to that answer, "that I'm not sure that I understand it myself, or that I'll be able to explain it to you very well. With that said, do you still want an answer?"

Madoka swallowed. "Yes. Yes, I do."

"Essentially, Akira isn't human. And I don't mean in the same way that Setchan isn't human, or Mana, or Zazie-san, or especially Chachamaru. Although out of all of them, I think she's closest in nature to Chachamaru - something created to resemble humanity, rather than something that results from the combination of humanity with something else. And like Chachamaru, she didn't have a soul until one was made for her, as a result of her pactio with Negi. Are you with me so far?"

"Ah ... yes," Madoka lied, wide-eyed. _Zazie isn't human? _Chachamaru_ isn't human?_

From the look on her face, Konoka wasn't all that fooled by Madoka's half-hearted attempt at deception. But she pushed on regardless. "When Negi made a pactio with her, he gave her a soul - born from a sliver of his own."

"You can do that?" Madoka interjected. "Doesn't that ... hurt?"

"_I_ can't," Konoka replied quickly. "I wouldn't know where to start. And as to hurting, no. The soul is infinite. You can empty infinity from it, and infinity yet remains. So Akira got a soul ... but that was only half the problem.

"A pactio is a strengthening magic," Konoka resumed her explanation after a pause. "And one of the things that it strengthens is the senses. And in Akira's case, it strengthened a sense that was ... very weak, but which would have grown stronger and stronger with the passage of time."

"... she can hear singing in the water," Madoka guessed, faintly.

"Yes. She probably always had, just not consciously. But now she realizes what she's hearing, and normally it would be a compulsion that she couldn't resist ... but she has a soul. So she can resist, and she does resist, the compulsion to return to the ocean and join with others of her kind."

Konoka paused, perhaps anticipating another interjection from Madoka, but none was forthcoming. "And thus, we have the current situation. The person that we know as Akira is being crushed between the dictates of her soul, which demand that she remain as human as possible, and those of her true self, which demand that she give up that seeming. In psychoanalytic terms, her id and her superego are -"  
_  
Now_ Madoka interjected. "I don't -" She shook her head. "How do you know about psychoanalysis?" she asked, bewilderedly.

"I'm learning healing magic. You'd be surprised at how applicable some of this stuff is."

"Can you use it to fix this?"

Konoka's faint smile collapsed, and she shook her head. "About as easily as I could 'fix' you being tall," she answered. "Or your alcoholism."

Madoka stared. "What the hell are you talking about? I've - okay, I've had some amazake, from time to time, but -"

"I'm getting pretty good at detecting predispositions," Konoka said, rather heavily. "You might want to avoid _any_ alcoholic beverages in the future. But fixing the problem is still well beyond my abilities. I think it might always be - even though I very much want to be able to fix mental and emotional problems, I think the only way that I'll ever be able to do so is ... well, evil."

The shy way that she said that word might have made Madoka laugh, if she'd found anything even a little bit funny about any of this. "So what ... what can we do?"

"For Akira?" Konoka sighed. "Love her. Care for her. Make her feel as good as possible ... because eventually, she's going to break under the strain, and I suspect that we're going to lose her. One way, or another. And when that happens, mourn her, and care for the child she left behind."

"Her child - is she -"

"Her daughter is completely normal, as far as I can tell," Konoka replied quickly. "Since I don't know much about Akira's people, though, it's hard to say for certain. The only things that I've found are some old US Navy records that Mana discovered, which make me think that a certain scary story Haruna recommended for me might be closer to the truth than I'm really comfortable."

"I don't like scary stories," Madoka said.

"Get used to them. You're in one." Konoka nodded solemnly, then smiled. "But you're in another sort of story too," she added, and the comforting way she was rubbing Madoka's shoulders took on a different character all of a sudden.

It had been a while since she'd last been with Sakurako, who'd gotten peeved at her after her fling with Ako and Kotaro. And that encounter had been a while ago. And she'd always thought Konoka was cute, if completely off-limits due to both the headmaster's granddaughter thing and the scary bodyguard with a crush thing. So when they started kissing each other, it went on for quite a while before Madoka pulled back and gasped out, "Wait, wait ... no, this, this is crazy, what about you and -"

"Setchan isn't here now," Konoka said, quite reasonably. "At least I don't see her anywhere. Maybe she's hiding. Maybe she's hiding in your pants! Let's take them off so that we can check!"

That had to be up there with the most transparent rationalizations Madoka had ever heard, but the warmth of Konoka's body pressing up against her own was more than enough to distract her from raising any objections. Besides, from the look in Konoka's eyes as she pulled Madoka's pants down to around her ankles and began rubbing the palm of her hand against Madoka's panties, the other girl wasn't really in the mood to hear any of it.

"Setchan isn't here now," Konoka repeated, and Madoka could hear a certain anger and sorrow in the tone of her voice. "I wish she was here, because we always do this so well together. But she's not here. She's off doing things with someone else, probably."

* * *

In fact, at the moment, Setsuna was down in the basement, nursing her daughter, Arika. (The number of girls among Negi's children who'd been given that name was probably going to cause a fair amount of confusion in a few years.) She was also keeping one hand on Tsukuyomi's leash as she did so.

"This is boring," Tsukuyomi declared as she sat on the floor and pointedly avoided looking at Setsuna while she was being nursed. While several of the girls had decided that they found drinking each other's breast milk to be rather erotic, Tsukuyomi was not to be numbered among them. She had even made snarky comments about how the swollen glands on Setsuna's chest were going to slow her down in their duels. (It had not turned out that way.)

On the other hand, she was consistent in her attitudes, disliking her own increasing breast size as well - to the point where Setsuna thought she might be taking the drugs that Fuuka and Fumika were ... which, if it were the case, might mean that it was a good thing that she never nursed her daughter.

Even if that were the case, it wasn't _enough_ of a good thing to justify it. And with that thought, she let go of the leash, and reached down to pick up Amaterasu - as Tsukuyomi had rather arrogantly named her daughter - and brought the little girl up to her other breast. "Many things are boring that are also very necessary," she said aloud. "I hope you'll learn that soon."

She watched as her daughter's eyes opened up just a bit to see the other baby nursing, and then saw them looking at each other. Of course, their minds were surely too underdeveloped to understand what they were seeing, or form any opinion about it. But Setsuna couldn't help but imagine a bond forming between the two of them, beyond the simple fact that they were, technically, sisters.

* * *

"And Asuna's not here either, and Yuna's not here either," Konoka murmured as she slid two fingers up Madoka while her thumb rubbed the other girl's clit. "Or Nodoka, or Yue, or Paru. But you're here, Madoka, and you are very, very sweet." She punctuated that remark with a kiss on the petals of Madoka's flower.

Madoka lay back on the couch and gasped and shook. With those parts of her brain not wholly lost to pleasure, she was thinking that Sakurako could certainly use a few lessons in technique from Konoka. Of course, she was also thinking that Sakurako would be absolutely terrifying after those lessons. She wasn't sure whether it was a good thing to feel simultaneous anticipation and dread about something, but she had the distinct impression that she was going to be feeling it a lot from now on.

"They're going to love you and the others," Konoka said a few moments later, after gasps and shakes had briefly been replaced by shrieks and utter ecstatic paralysis. "Especially Misa-chan."

"Nghh," Madoka said in reply, then shook herself as she regained her breath. "Ah, she's ... she's not ... not too much into -"

"We'll fix that," Konoka said with sweet assurance. "Now don't be selfish, Madoka," she added as she slid up to sit on her face.

Madoka wasn't selfish. Well, okay, she was. But she did have a sense of obligation, and Konoka had just fucked her sweetly, so she was going to return the favor. And besides ... she hadn't called her Kugimin once.

"Oh, Kugimiiiiii!" Konoka cried out a few moments later.

... ah well.

* * *

"You no longer have any excuse," Arika had said to her, and Chizuru had been honest enough to admit that the older woman had a point in that. So she had allowed her to be drawn into the room, stripped and mounted on the bed, holding Arika tightly as they ground against each other in the darkness, while further down on the bed, Makie and Asuna licked at each other.

Arika's face was pressed into the pillow where Chizuru's head lay. Chizuru's ears could hear nothing but her oldest sister's sighs and gasps of pleasure from what they were doing to each other. And the shaking of her body was simply that of orgasm. And she knew that even if Arika's face lifted so that she could see it, there wouldn't be a tear in her eye.  
But she could tell that Arika was sobbing, that even as she knew pleasure, grief was with her too.

She didn't love Arika. She doubted that she would ever feel any sort of sisterly affection, or even friendship. But Chizuru had come to know this sad, mad woman fairly well in their time together, and despite the absence of love, she found that she still pitied her. Admittedly, she knew too that confessing that pity would get her absolutely nowhere.

So she satisfied herself by holding her tightly, and answering the heat of Arika's desire with that of her own.

In time, all four climaxed, and collapsed together on the bed, Arika and Asuna exchanging weary smiles which promised more to follow. First, though, Asuna turned over to Makie. "You're great, Maki-chan," she told her with a broad smile.

"Thank you!" Makie replied quickly, smiling brightly right back ... and said nothing more.

After a moment, Asuna coughed politely. "This is where you're supposed to compliment me back, you know?"

Makie, her nipples glistening with saliva and her sex dripping sex, blushed brightly. "Well, you know," she said uncomfortably. "It, it's _okay_, buuuuut ..."

"You like the love of men better," Arika supplied, with a gentle smile.

"Not even so much that, as, well, the best was when I realized that Negi was cumming inside of me, and I was going to have his baby, and -" Makie started to explain.

"And that was the best," Arika asked, smile fading.

"Is that bad?"

"No, no," Arika answered, with a shake of her head, as she quickly moved to place herself closer to Makie. "Far from it. That is the way that I feel, as well. The best, the very best, is when you are not merely making love, but also making _life_, life which will have the chance to know love as well! There is nothing more noble, nothing more _right_ in the world than that!"

"That's so beautiful!" Makie gasped, tears welling up. "Oneesama!"

"My sweet little sister!" Arika cried out, as she grabbed the other girl.

"Oh, gah," Asuna muttered.

"It is a little hard to take," Chizuru agreed ... then looked down to see that Asuna's hand was on her breast, and raised an eyebrow.

Asuna shrugged and kissed her soundly. A few moments later, as she was slamming three fingers of her left hand up Asuna's moist cunt and rubbing her clit with that hand's thumb, while Asuna mirrored her movements exactly, Chizuru had to admit that she was starting to see just what Ayaka saw in the girl.

* * *

_The next morning, this happened._

"Ehhhhh?" Makie asked as she stood up from her seat at the breakfast table. "Why can't I come with you? You knocked up Chizu-ne and she's going with you! So why can't I?"

When the mild chuckles at Negi's embarrassed expression (as well as the rather annoyed looks on Natsumi and Evangeline's faces) had faded a bit, he was calm enough to give her an answer. "Chizuru is going with us because there's no going there and coming back quickly without her. You don't have that sort of talent, Makie, so I think it's for the best if you -"

"But I can do other stuff! I can do all sorts of useful stuff!" Makie said. "And I've never been to - where are you going again?"

"Siberia," Arika explained calmly, without a smile. "The prison is located within the magical void created by the Tunguska impact."

Makie didn't look all that certain of her geography - she was still working on Europe and East Asia, with Central Asia still to come - but she was certain of one thing. "I could be helpful there!" she insisted.

"I'm sorry, Makie, but I think it's a bad idea. We're going to be taking a very small group - just me, Asuna, Setsuna, Konoka, Satomi - and Tsukuyomi." Negi avoided looking at Makie when he said that last name. He was fairly certain that her face was going to look like exactly what it did look like.

"Tsukuyomi!" Makie sqwawked.

"Yyyyyes?" said Tsukuyomi as she looked up from where she was drinking her breakfast from a plate on the floor.

"Why are _you_ going?" Makie asked.

"YA govoryu Rossii," the girl replied patiently.

Makie stared at her. Tsukuyomi stared right back. To Makie's perhaps dubious credit, the former mercenary was the one who gave up the contest first, though that was largely because she got bored.

"Makie-san," Ayaka spoke up just as Makie was about to start saying things again. "I believe that I and everyone else here understands your position on this matter. But if _I_ am not going, why, pray, would you imagine that you were?"

"... I outrank you?" Makie said hesitantly.

Ayaka's eyebrow began to twitch. "On what basis?"

"I'm Negi's aunt, you're just his sister, so nyeah?" Makie said, still hesitantly. Even on the 'nyeah'.

"That is the most absurd, spurious -"

"I'm his aunt and his sister, so I outrank both of you," Asuna interjected. "You're not going." She stopped herself, with some difficulty, from adding 'so nyeah' to the end of he statement.

"Poot," said Makie, pouting. She got over it fairly quickly. "Okay, then I'll stay here and work with Ako-chan, Akira-chan and Yuna-chan to help Yuna-chan get closer to her sexy big sister!"

"... I'm screwed, aren't I?" Yuna asked no one in particular.

"That sounds like a good idea," said Negi. "Why don't you start in on that today?"

"... why do you hate me?" Yuna now asked someone in particular.

He didn't! He was very fond of her! But it would help if he had a distraction to cover what _he_ was going to be doing today. He'd told the truth about who, among those present, would be coming with him. But he hadn't mentioned that two others, not present, were needed for what he had in mind.

* * *

"Something wrong, Negi-kun?" Asakura asked as she watched him looking around at the vacant classroom with a puzzled expression.

"Well, no," he answered. "And yet ... well, have you ever noticed that there are an awful lot of abandoned classrooms at this school? I mean, this isn't the one that I use to ... well, never mind that now. There are so many of them though. I mean, I know that the school has been losing students, lately, but when I see how many classrooms we have that aren't in use, I can't help but think that the school could support even more students than it did when I arrived."

Asakura tilted her head as she leaned back against the wall. "Well, yeah, it could ... but not all the rooms in this building are as safe as this one. We've talking rotted floorboards, broken windows, ant colonies, portals to hell dimensions, unsafe staircases -"

"Portals to hell dimensions?" Negi yelped.

"Actually, I just threw that one in there to make sure you were really listening," Asakura admitted with a chuckle.

"Really, Asakura-san!" the young teacher scolded.

"Sorry, sorry," she said, manifestly not sorry. "But it's just fun to tease you, Negi-kun, and I haven't had a chance to do it in a while." Her naughty grin got a bit melancholy. "You've been kind of down, lately."

"I know," he agreed. "And I'm afraid that what I have to talk to you about isn't going to make either of us very happy. My mother came back from her voyages last night ... with the news that she'd found my father ... or rather, she'd found where he'd -" He choked on the last word.

"You mean -" Kazumi asked, truly surprised, as she hadn't been since the start of her involvement in the world of magic. That had been pleasant, though. The sight of her teacher, whom she'd come to love deeply, on the verge of breaking down, wasn't pleasant at all. But she was still a reporter first, and reporters have to get their facts straight. "He's dead?" she asked.

Negi just nodded, unable to speak.

"Oh, Negi. Negi, Negi, Negi," she said, fighting the temptation to pick him up and hug him. They didn't have the sort of relationship where she could do that. Unfortunately.

After a few moments, when he had finally regained control, Negi spoke again. "That's ... that's why I need your help. Well, your help and Sayo-san's help. We're going to the place where mother found ... him ... and investigate it. I am hoping that there will be other ghosts there, and that Sayo can talk to them. I know that she's afraid of ghosts, and I wouldn't ask this of her, but there isn't enough time for me to get good enough at necromancy, so -"

"Sh-sh-sh," Asakura said, waving her hand. "We're your friends, dummy. Of course we're gonna help you with stuff like this." Her face went serious, though. "But there's something I do have to ask, about the stuff I've heard about, some of which kinda concerns me -"

"Yes, I'm living in sin with more than half of the class and have had children with most if not all of them, including the ones with whom I'm related," Negi admitted wearily. "I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that you had your suspicions."

"... uhhhhhh," said Kazumi, blank-eyed. "I ... I was going to ask you about what you've been doing in abandoned classrooms, lately. I didn't know anything about any of that."

"... I wonder if the fall will kill me if I angle my body to the ground just the right way?" Negi mused as he looked at the window.

"Hey!" said Asakura, sounding genuinely alarmed, after a moment in which Negi did nothing but stare speculatively at the window. "Hey! Don't make jokes like that around people who pal around with ghosts! It's not funny when Itoshiki-sensei does it, so don't you start!"

"I'm sorry," Negi sighed. "I just ... this is almost as bad as when you found out about my magic, and - wait, _ghosts_, plural?" he asked. "I thought you could only see Sayo-san because -"

"That's true, but she's, well, 'introduced' me to a few of the other ghosts on campus, hoping that regular human contact would make them a little less scary-crazy, and -" Asakura broke off in mid-exposition, lowered her hands from their air-quote position, and glared at him. "Don't change the subject! What the hell, Negi-kun? How did this happen?"

"It's sort of a long story," he explained rather weakly.

"So tell it!" she demanded. "Geh, I thought you'd learned your lesson when we all learned about what happened to your village!"

Obediently, Negi told her everything, from the day when he'd come to his mother with a question about her relationship to Asuna, and all that had followed from that point. She listened patiently, her face showing no reaction to anything that she heard, so as to keep him talking rather than making him react to her reactions. It was difficult, particularly when the narrative involved things like goddesses, and then again later when she heard about what he'd gotten up to in their classroom just the other day, with _Makie_ of all people. But she listened, and listened, and listened.

"And there you have it," Negi concluded.

"Your mother belongs in the prison where you found her," Asakura said firmly.

He flinched, but couldn't argue the point.

"I mean ... shit, Negi-kun. I thought everyone having a crush on you was funny as hell. But for things to go this far, for someone to encourage them to go this far ..." She fell silent. "You know what I've got to ask, now, right?"

"... demonstrably, I'm terrible at predicting what you're going to do or say, Asakura-san," Negi pointed out, with a sad little smile on his face.

She coughed. "Yeah. Um. Okay. Serious face now." Once the serious face was firmly established, she continued. "Do you think she killed your father?"

Negi felt himself go white. "What? _What?_"

"I'll take that as a no," she said. "Think of it as a story, Negi-kun. Think it happening to someone else. Think about a woman finding her husband imprisoned, and then telling him what she's been doing - which includes having sex with her son. _Their_ son. How do you think he'd react? What do you think would happen?"

"I ... I can't believe that," he said at last. "It doesn't make sense, Asakura-san! She volunteered to take us to his body, let us examine it! That's not something that someone who'd ... done that would do!" A moment later, he whimpered, "Is it?"

She considered. "No. Probably not. I guess ... we're going to find out what happened, aren't we? When we go there."

"Then you'll still help us?" Negi asked.

She looked at him with obvious surprise. "Hey! Nothing has changed. You're our friend, Negi-kun. You're up to your cute little ass - if not higher! - in trouble, stuff that we can't help you deal with. But we can do this for you, so we're gonna do it. That's what friends are for."

He was crying, now. "Asakura-san!" he cried out.

"Oh, cut it out!" she said. "People'll get the wrong idea. And if they get the wrong idea about us, they're gonna get it about everybody else, too!"

A little while later, Asakura was watching him walk away from the building from the classroom window. "... keeping schtum about _this_ one is going to be easy," she mused aloud.

"You don't want to get any of them in real trouble?" Sayo asked as she hovered beside her.

"Actually, I wouldn't give a crap about getting his mom in trouble. Talking to her during this is gonna be a reallll barrel of laughs," she said disgustedly. "But the only newsies who'd buy this would be the absolute lowest of the low, and I've got standards."

"It really bothers you?" Sayo asked.

"Kids having kids? Yeah, that bothers the hell out of me! This isn't America, for pity's sake!" Asakura shook her head. "Doesn't it bother you?"

"... not a lot that people can do really bothers me," Sayo replied, sounding somewhat embarrassed. "I don't remember it, but I think that I've seen worse things."

"Geehhhh," Asakura sounded. "Don't ever remember, okay, sexy?"

"Okay," she agreed. Then, in a fit of honesty, added, "I sort of envy, them, though. Being able to have children ... it might be nice."

"Yeah, well, don't expect to vicariously experience that through me," Asakura said.

* * *

_About a year or so later, not all of it experienced in standard time, this happened._

"SAYOOOOOOO!" Asakura shrieked as she felt her water break. "**This is all your fault!** I swear that I'm going to get you for this somehow!"

* * *

_Quite a bit before that, however, in fact on the same day that Kazumi and Negi had their revealing conversation, this happened._

"So this is your plan?" Ako asked dubiously as she crouched behind the bushes, peering out at the girl in motorcycle leathers as she stood and spoke with a rather rotund teacher. Even at this distance, it was fairly obvious that the girl with the long, blue-black hair didn't want to be having the conversation she was having.

"Yes, this is my plan," Yuna said. "This is a perfectly serviceable plan. We'll follow her wherever she goes, get used to her routine, and then, when we know it as well as the palms of our hands, we'll exploit it to _gradually_ get close to her, so _gradually_ that she won't even realize that we're doing it. And then we'll bring her to Negi-sensei, and he'll take care of the rest."

"How long is all that going to take?" Makie asked, just as dubious as Ako, even if she was having a better time.

"A couple months, probably."

"Months!" Ako and Makie chorused quietly.

"You rush a miracle-worker, you get lousy miracles!" Yuna snapped, glaring at them.

"What does that have to do with you?" Makie asked, not getting the reference.

"Thank you, Makie, for that vote of confidence," Yuna growled.

"... what vote of confidence?" Makie asked, not getting the sarcasm, either, and now becoming incredibly confused.

Delicately interposing herself between her two friends before Yuna could start throttling Makie, as the look on her face suggested she was about to do, Ako also interjected verbally. "Look, Yuna, this plan ... it's not so much that we mind stalking this girl. But don't you think that it'd be a lot quicker if you just approached her, or let us do it, like with Donet-san?"

"Don't talk to me about Donet, okay?" Yuna snapped. The rigors of motherhood and an incredibly hedonistic lifestyle had all contributed to making her a lot more conscientious and careful than she had been before all this, but being reminded of her first dumping still hurt, all these months later. The fact that it, unlike her father's dumping, had stuck, even after Donet paid the school another visit - and firmly refused to renew their intimate connection - didn't help matters.

Once she calmed down a little, she continued. "We're not going to do that, this time. You two are not going to go walking up to the person that I'm surveilling and start chatting with them! At least I don't have to worry about that with you," she said to Akira - or rather to the Akira-shaped void where she'd been, the last time Yuna checked.

Yuna blinked, then looked up over the hedge to see Akira placidly yet briskly walking towards Natsuki's position, while the teacher had started to saunter off whistling innocently. Natsuki was glaring in Akira's general direction while the girl said, "Excuse me, I think your sister would like to talk to you."

"I don't _have_ a sister," Natsuki growled.

"She even growls like you do," said Makie, peeking up beside Yuna.

"Nyargh," Yuna replied, more or less confirming Makie's opinion.

She got up and dashed over to Akira, who was saying, "Oh, I'm sorry. I think I must have been misinformed then. But Akashi Yuna told me that you were her sister and -"

By that point, Yuna was able to cover Akira's mouth with her hands and start pulling her away from Natsuki. "Ha ha, what a day I'm having, you'll have to excuse my friend, she's had some serious emotional problems lately -" said Yuna, very very quickly as she tried to pull Akira away.

"Okay, you are really starting to get on my nerves," Natsuki said, hands clenched into fists at her side. "I thought I told you that I didn't want anything to do with you the first time I caught you spying on me!"

"I wasn't spying!" Yuna protested, while continuing to tug at Akira. "You'd have to be doing something covert to be spied upon!" Akira wasn't moving. It was sort of odd. She never put up this much resistance, to anything. But trying to get her to move, right at the moment, was like lifting a huge bucket of water.

"Shut up," Natsuki suggested. "Look, I don't know you, and you don't know me, and -"

Yuna, frustrated with her inability to move Akira, gave up on that, and turned to meet Natsuki's angry eyes with some anger of her own. "Yes, actually, I _do_ know you," she said. "I don't know if _you_ do."

"What the hell is that supposed to mean?"

"I know who you are because I talked with my dad about you," Yuna explained. "And as far as I can tell, you haven't. So I'm one up on you."

"That's _crap_," Natsuki replied after a pause.

"Look," Yuna said, trying to reign things in before the two of them started screeching at each other. "All my dad wants is to talk to you, so he can have his say. All I want is to help him do that -"

Akira, whose mouth was still covered by one of Yuna's hands, made a coughing noise.

"- although as it happens, there's another friend of ours who'd like to have a word with you, too," she added.

"Good for your friend. Have his people call my people," Natsuki said dismissively, then turned her back and stomped away.

"See? Didn't work," Yuna said after a moment, taking her hand away from Akira's mouth.

"Yes, it did," Akira disagreed.

Yuna blinked. "Are ... are you arguing with me?" she asked. "You never -"

"Our master wants this person as an ally, and so I will do whatever I have to do in order to achieve that," Akira answered, blinking. "I don't see anything strange about that. Fortunately, she's told us what we have to do," she continued as she started to walk back to the bush.

"... wait a minute, she wasn't being serious when she said that. She doesn't _have_ people," Yuna said as she ran after Akira.

"Yes, she does," Akira disagreed.

"This is getting spook - agh! Makie! You're practically in public!" she yelled once she saw what Makie and Ako had gotten up to behind the bush. "Have a little self-control, will you?"

* * *

_One day later, this happened._

"I can't believe this worked," Yuna muttered as they walked towards the library.

"It hasn't worked, as yet," Akira reminded her. "We, our master's people, have made an arrangement to speak with your sister's people. Or person, rather. However, I am certain that once we impress upon this person the sincerity and importance of our master's intentions, this person will agree to be our partisan."

"... you do realize that I'm almost entirely driven by selfish motives, right?" Yuna asked.

Before Akira could answer that question, the third person in their party spoke up. "I'm still not entirely certain why you had me come along," said Chizuru, rather dubiously.

"You have experience in understanding the motives and desires of wealthy young women," Akira answered. "We may need to use this."

Chizuru coughed delicately. "You do realize that wealthy young women are not necessarily all alike, right? My understanding of Ayaka doesn't necessarily help me to -"

"I do realize that I do not care to be told what I do realize," Akira said, very calmly, tone even and level. "I find your lack of faith disturbing."

Akira and Chizuru came to a halt and watched Akira walk on without them for a moment. "That wasn't a film reference, was it?" Chizuru asked.

"That's my thing. So no. No it wasn't. And yes, that concerns me." Yuna started walking again, briskly, to catch up to Akira. Chizuru found herself hesitating a bit longer, but, with a sigh, she eventually did the same.

It didn't take long for them to find the person with whom they'd made their appointment. She was seated at a table in the library's main reading room, engrossed in a collection of poetry by Yosano Akiko. It took her a moment to notice that they'd arrived. Actually, Chizuru suspected that she had noticed almost immediately, and only feigned her abrupt realization and what followed. "Ah, my apologies," said Fujino Shizuru as she set down the book. "I fear that I quite lost track of time."

"No, no," Chizuru said quickly, before Akira could do something honest like agreeing with her. "It's entirely our fault for arriving early." _Heaven help me, I_ am _good at this._

"Well, be that as it may, would you care to have a seat?" Shizuru said with a gesture towards the three seats on the other side of the table. The three of them quickly sat down and faced her.

"Thank you for agreeing to meet with us," Akira began.

"It's nothing, I assure you. I am always happy to give whatever assistance I can to younger students."

"Yes, you are famous for that," Akira agreed.

"Oh, dear, you are flattering me," Shizuru interjected with a soft laugh, behind a hand.

"... no," said Akira. "Simply describing."

"You'll have to excuse my friend, she has some emotional problems," Yuna said quickly.

"... probably," Akira agreed. No one was listening, though.

"This is actually about one of the students that you've helped a lot. Kuga Natsuki-san." Yuna watched for a reaction, didn't see one, so pressed on. "She is ... well, she is my sister."

Now that got a reaction. Shizuru's grayish-white eyebrows went up. "Really? That's something of a surprise. M- Natsuki has never mentioned having any family, aside from her late mother."

"She's ... somewhat estranged from me, and our father," Yuna understated. "I want to change that, if I can. And I - we were hoping that you, who are her friend, might be persuaded to help persuade her to at least consider meeting with her father, so that he can explain why he and her mother ... weren't together." Even for someone who was basically a libertine, talking about this wasn't easy. Perhaps especially for a libertine, who thrived on action, not conversation.

"I see," Shizuru said, nodding in understanding. She contemplated for a few moments, before sorrowfully shaking her head. "I'm very sorry, but I think that I've inspired a bit too much confidence in you. While Natsuki and I are friends, and I've tried to be ... helpful to her, I can't say that I've ever had much luck in persuading her to take actions that she doesn't want to take. I will make the attempt, but I doubt that there will be much in the way of success. You have my sympathies."

"I knew it wouldn't -" Yuna began to growl.

"Yuna. Akira-san. Would you mind waiting outside for a few moments, please?" Chizuru asked quietly, but firmly.  
Yuna, who had been half-way out of her seat, paused to look down at Chizuru, who was keeping her eyes firmly on the girl across the table.

"Certainly," said Akira, as calm as ever, as she also stood up and gently guided Yuna out of the reading room.

The two young women sat for a moment, regarding each other without saying a word.

Finally, Chizuru broke the silence. "You're very good."

Shizuru blinked, tilted her head slightly. "I'm uncertain how best to accept that compliment, as I'm not altogether sure what is being complimented."

"_Very_ good," Chizuru repeated, nodding. "I would even say superb. I don't think that I could do that as well as you." She leaned forward slightly. "But it doesn't take a Picasso to spot a fake Picasso."

Shizuru's features froze.

"What it does take," Chizuru continued, still leaning forward, hands still folded in front of her, something she'd borrowed from Arika, "is someone skilled in faking Picassos. And now you will say -"

"I'm sure I don't know what you're talking about," Shizuru said in the exact moment that Chizuru did - though her tone varied, as Chizuru's did not, starting out very strong and then growing faint and confused as she realized that the other woman had exactly predicted her words.

Another silence ensued, and then Chizuru continued. "It's funny, really. They asked me to come here because I had experience handling an ojousama. I learned how to do that by living alongside one of them for years and years and years, and in the process, I got very good at posing as someone who belonged in that world. But I never forgot, and was never allowed to forget, that I didn't belong there. That I was a guest. So I recognize the tricks that you use from the inside out." She made a moue. "Most of them. As I said, you're very good."

Shizuru closed her strange, reddish-brown eyes for a moment. When she opened them again, she wasn't smiling. And there wasn't any sort of ditziness in her tone. "A bodyguard, then?"

"Of sorts," Chizuru answered.

"You have my sympathies."

"No, I don't."

"No, you don't. But that's what one says, isn't it. I suppose, though, you had it easier. Not being permitted to forget that one doesn't belong somewhere must be, in its way, easier than _sometimes_ being permitted to forget that, and _sometimes_ being encouraged to do so. But every now and then being reminded of the realities."

"Adopted?" Chizuru asked.

"After my mother died, yes."

"You have my sympathies."

"No -"

"Yes." Whatever Chizuru might feel about her mother, however icy the place in her where memories of her love should be, she knew that the emptiness that would follow when she was gone would be far worse.

"... thank you," Shizuru said, without any warmth. "So. Are you now going to blackmail me?"

"And risk the chance that I would have to destroy such a piece of art as you?" Chizuru said, smiling with equal warmth. "I think not. It's good to have options, but you're going to help us to get through to Kuga-san because you want to do so."

"Do I?" Shizuru asked, very dryly.

"Yes. Your father adopted you. He wanted you in his life, for whatever reason. Are you really going to let your friend keep pushing away the father who wants her in his life?"

"Has it occurred to you that I might not want her to have anyone other than me close to her?" the girl asked.

"Yes. That crossed my mind when I heard you _almost_ call her 'my Natsuki'," Chizuru admitted. "But I know what it is to love someone, and to wish someone well, and know that they aren't always the same thing." She leaned back. "If the time comes when you can't take it anymore, someone like you will tell her to her face that you can't bear the fact that she doesn't love you back. Whatever else you do, you won't hide that from her. I know ... because that's what I did."

"Well-played," said Shizuru, after another moment of contemplation.

"Thank you. Let's call the girls in and tell them the good news, shall we?"

"What happened?" Shizuru asked.

Chizuru blinked. "What happened when?"

"Poor form," the girl said, shaking her head. "When you told her to her face that you couldn't bear the fact that she didn't love you back?"

"Ah. Then." Chizuru looked away. "She assured me that she did, and always would."

"Liar," said Shizuru.

"Takes one to know one."

"Yes, it does."

* * *

_On the following Sunday, this happened._

"Why do I let you talk me into these things?" Natsuki groaned as she allowed Shizuru to lead her up the path to the haunted-looking house's front door.

"Because you, very occasionally, recognize that I'm older and wiser than you are -"

"A few months!"

"- and that I always have what I believe to be your best interests in mind, even if you don't always agree with me as to what they are," Shizuru continued, without showing any sign of annoyance at being interrupted like that. "We arranged a meeting on neutral ground -"

"Neutral my ass. How is a fellow teacher even remotely neutral?"

"When he's eleven years old and out of town today, anyway."

Natsuki just grunted in response, looking behind them oddly. "I have the weirdest feeling we were being followed."

"Paranoia will destroy ya."

Natsuki blinked at the colloquialism. "... _what?_"

"I said that you're being paranoid, Natsuki," Shizuru lied as they reached the door. "Probably start imagining people saying weird things next." Before Natsuki could respond to that, she rang the buzzer.

The door opened, and a petite girl with a high forehead and a frown that could give Natsuki's perpetual scowl a run for its money looked out at them. "Kuga and Fujino?" she asked.

"You have the advantage of us."

"Ayase Yue," she said. "I'm watching the house for Negi-sensei. Please come in." She beckoned them to do so.

A few moments later, the two of them were in the house's dining room, facing Yuna and Akashi-sensei across its table. The teacher opened his mouth to greet Natsuki, but she beat him to the punch. "She doesn't need to be here," Natsuki said, with a jab of her trigger finger at Yuna.

"I'm more a part of it than your class rep, here," Yuna protested.

"She stays, or I -" Natsuki began to declare.

"Pardon me, Ayase-san, but didn't you say something about making some tea for this meeting?" Shizuru asked abruptly.

"... I didn't, but it sounds like an idea. Ever had Tibetan butter tea?" Yue asked.

"I cannot say I ever have. I'll be just a short distance away, well within earshot," she said to Natsuki, with a glance in Yuna's direction over the last words.

When she was gone, Natsuki turned back to look at the teacher. "Okay," she said at last, before sitting down, heavily. "You've gone to some trouble to get me here, so I'll listen. So. Talk."

"Okay, then," he said, sitting down on the opposite side of the table from her. "Let me first ask you ... just what is it that you think happened between your mother and me?"

Natsuki let her head roll back so that she was staring up at the ceilling. "Up until pretty recently, I figured you two were together and then you dumped her when she got pregnant with me because you didn't want a family," she related wearily. "Then you hooked up with _her _mom and things were different."

"That's not what happened," Akashi said quickly.

"Oh. Then you two had a fling with the same results?" She lowered her head to look at him with a raised eyebrow.

"That's not ... _quite_ ... what happened."

"Is it not quite what happened in the same way that my mom was a little bit pregnant?" Natsuki asked.

"No," he said with difficulty. "Okay. To start with, you need to understand that I was already married to Yuka when I met Saeko."

Natsuki gaped at him for a few moments. "... oh _well_, then," she said. "That makes everything better! I'm the product of adultery! Wow, I feel so much more warmly disposed -"

"Wow, and we haven't even gotten to the good parts, yet," interjected Yuna as she pulled over a chair and sat down facing Natsuki across the table, putting her feet up on top of it. Her father gave her a look, which she returned with an annoyed one of her own. He shook his head and went back to looking at Natsuki.

"You knew about this?" Natsuki demanded.

Yuna nodded. "Got the story from him the first time you and me met. Okay, technically a week after the first time you and me met, but I don't think that really matters."

"And it doesn't bother you?"

Now Yuna smiled. "It takes a lot to really bother me."

Natsuki shook her head, then turned back to Akashi. "So. You were cheating on your wife with my mother."

"That's not quite what happened, either," he started to explain. "It's very complicated, you see, and ... well, let me start at the beginning. My wife, Yuna's mother, and I had a ... complicated relationship. We, well, we ..." He trailed off.

"When they met, she was dating another woman, and they broke up so mom could marry him," Yuna simplified.

"That's, that's not quite what happened _then_, either," Akashi protested.

Now Natsuki was gaping at Yuna. "Your mother was -"

"Bi," supplied Yuna. "It's a simple syllable."

And abruptly, Natsuki developed an awful suspicion. "Wait. Waitwaitwait," she said, then lifted an unsteady hand to point at Akashi. "You said, that you weren't exactly screwing around your wife."

"Yes, that's ..." He trailed off, then took a deep breath. "Yuka and Saeko met while she was out on a mission. They became ... friendly, and she brought her back -"

"You're saying that my mother was your wife's girlfriend?" Natsuki cried. "Is that what you're telling me?"

"Not exactly," Akashi hedged.

"Oh for -"

"Hook-up is probably closer to the right word," Yuna interjected.

Natsuki was starting to feel very dizzy. "And, your wife brought her back home with her, and you had sex with her, too?"

"It was more or less all three of us at the same time," Akashi admitted. "It was a very interesting one-night stand."

"And my mom got pregnant because -"

He nodded. "I accept responsibility. It was my fault. I wasn't using birth control magic at the time, since my wife and most of the other women she occasionally brought home -"

"Mom wasn't even the first?!"

Akashi continued as if he hadn't been interrupted. "- had implants that took care of that for them. The two of us weren't really looking to start a family at the time, but then my father-in-law passed away, and - well, I suppose that's not really pertinent to your interests," he said as he saw Natsuki staring at him in blank incomprehension.

"In any event, when Yuko and I woke up the next day, Saeko was already gone from our apartment. It was a surprise to both of us, since they'd been talking about doing some shopping together. But she was nowhere to be found, anywhere in town. I could say that she'd vanished without a trace, except ..."

"Dad?" Yuna asked, when he'd trailed off. "You didn't tell me this part."

"It wasn't really pertinent to your interests," he admitted. "Anyway, it's not quite true that I couldn't find a trace of her. When I was asking around about her, I found that she was actually known to a number of my colleagues, from a few months before all of this. In every case that I could discover, she'd tried to insinuate herself into their lives, much like she had with us, and present herself as a sex partner."

"I don't understand," Natsuki said. "Are you saying she was some sort of magic groupie, on top of everything else?"

He held up his hands in perplexity. "I don't know, Natsuki. I can't even guess what your mother was thinking or trying to do. Well, I suppose that I can guess - since I'm looking at the results of what she did."

He fell silent, and Natsuki didn't say anything. For a wonder, Yuna didn't interject pithily either.

"About ten years later, I received a phone call from the hospital in Sakaimachi telling me that my daughter was in critical condition," Akashi said at last. "Since my only daughter that I knew about was in the next room watching television, I thought it must be some sort of a mistake. But they confirmed that my name was listed as the father on your birth certificate, and that there was emergency contact information about me in your medical file. And that was how I found out that Saeko was missing and presumed dead, and that you were alive."

"Wait, _you_ paid for my hospitalization?" Natsuki asked, sharply.

"What your mother's insurance didn't cover, I did," he confirmed.

"Why didn't you ... I don't know ... bring me home to live with you?" she asked.

He sighed. "My wife had just died a few months before all this, and I was having a hard time looking after one child," he explained.

"Who was really doing more of the looking after, if you want to get technical," Yuna observed wryly.

"Well, yes."

"I don't believe this," Natsuki moaned. "What ... why - why aren't you more shocked by all of this?" she finally yelled at Yuna.

"I told you, it takes a lot to really shock me. Look, does it really matter what the heck your mother was doing?" Yuna asked.

"_Yes_," Natsuki answered fiercely. "If, if I understand that, then maybe I'll be closer to understanding why she -"  
_was killed_, was what she would have said. But in the darkest reaches of Kuga Natsuki's mind, there was another question which came before that, something she had never confronted, something that terrified her in ways that nothing else could. And it was surging up from where she'd hidden it beneath layers of denial, and amnesia, and grief.

"Why she what?" Akashi-sensei asked, puzzled. "Why she died? I thought it was an accident." His confusion abruptly turned into a very different emotion - sheer horror. "Natsuki ... what did your mother do?" he asked.

The sound that came from Kuga Natsuki, as the question that must never be asked was asked, will not be described. As Yuna and her father watched Natsuki's convulsions in stupefied horror, the door to the kitchen slid open with a bang and Shizuru entered at a run. "What did you _do_!" she shrieked in their direction as she dashed over to where Natsuki was now slumped on the tale trembling.

"All I did was ask her a question," Akashi-sensei said, helpless with confusion.

Shizuru glared at him, but before she could spit the accusation that was bubbling up through her mind, there was a throat-clearing noise from behind her. Her head snapped back to regard a blonde girl in a sweater and pair of blue jeans, with a brightly gleaming - actually _glowing_ - bracelet on her wrist. She was in sufficient fury that it took her a moment to recognize Yukihiro Ayaka, whom she'd had introduced to her at one of the endless parties that were her existence outside of school.

"He is not lying," Ayaka said firmly. She glanced over Shizuru's shoulder at Yuna and Akashi-sensei. "I took the liberty of monitoring your conversation," she added.

"By monitoring, you of course mean -" Akashi-sensei began to say.

"Exactly," Ayaka interrupted. "And, yes, Fujino-san, simply being asked a question _could_ provoke something like this."  
Shizuru's eyes narrowed. "How did you know exactly what I was going to say?"

"Obviously, I read minds," Ayaka replied wearily.

Shizuru waited for the beat, for the quiet disclaimer that the speaker just had good intuition. They never came.  
"They're going to invent something worse than being turned into an ermine for us, aren't they?" Akashi-sensei mused aloud, taking off his glasses and rubbing his eyes.

Shizuru ignored that odd statement to focus on the more easily understandable one. "You were reading my mind?" she said slowly, outrage building with every word. "You were reading _Natsuki's_ mind?" That was almost shouted.

Ayaka weathered the fury calmly. "Yes, yes, spare me the self-righteous prattling about the privacy of one's own thoughts. Before you are so quick to flee this place, which - yes, you are correct - is not quite so neutral as Chizuru might have indicated to you, let me just point out that, if not for my supposedly unconscionable violation of your minds, I would know neither why Akashi-sensei's question provoked this response ... nor why you, out of everyone present, are the only one with the background to understand the much greater violation she endured, long ago."

Shizuru's face went even whiter than it was when she was calm. "You mean -"

"Her _mom_ -" Yuna started to say at roughly the same moment.

"I won't say anymore. I have perhaps said too much," Ayaka interjected, holding up a hand. "I would suggest that the rest of those present give them some space." This was said with a glance from Akashi-sensei, who looked no less furious than Shizuru herself, to the kitchen door, where Yue was standing with a teapot.

Shizuru looked as though she wanted to say something, most likely something bitingly angry. But she looked at Natsuki, still slumped at the table, and stilled herself, before dropping down to wrap her friend in an embrace. Natsuki didn't resist. She didn't do much of anything, actually. And so whatever joy Shizuru felt at this touch was decidedly muted.  
Ayaka nodded towards the doors again.

"There is another matter," said Kaede, as she appeared from nowhere. Unfortunately, Shizuru was a bit too focused on murmuring gentle words of solace to actually notice anything odd about her arrival, and everyone else was used to it by now.

"What?" Ayaka asked, eyes narrowed.

"A person as yet-unknown is prowling around the building's perimeter, having arrived shortly after these two," Kaede explained, swiftly.

That got Shizuru's attention. "We _were_ followed," she said, looking up. "Natsuki said that she _thought_ we were being followed."

"Who would follow you?" Ayaka asked.

Shizuru shook her head.

"Intercept this person," Ayaka snapped, returning her attention to Kaede.

"By your leave," Kaede said ... then smiled. "I already have."

* * *

_A few minutes later, this happened._

"Well, that could have gone better," the red-haired woman announced as she sat tied to a chair, stripped down to her underwear, in the mansion's kitchen.

Ayaka, arms crossed beneath her breasts, glared at the person Kaede had dragged in through the back door. "Do we know who this person is?"

"Per her identification," Kaede mused, going through the captive's wallet, "she's Sugiura Midori, a _former_ student here, currently enrolled in Teito University."

"Once a Mahora girl, always a Mahora girl," Midori opined.

"One does not believe that this is the case. In any event, there is some reason to question the validity of her identification, as any that indicate her birthdate have been crudely altered to suggest that she is just seventeen years old."

"Do you _have_ to say that in such a way as to suggest that's hard to believe?" Midori asked with a pout.

"I recognize her," Akashi-sensei said, abruptly, as he also considered the captive. "She's a Teito student, yes, but she's doing some research here, on a grant. And she ... eight years ago, when she _was_ a student here, she was one of the Old Man's - I mean, Headmaster Konoe's pupils in the martial arts classes he was still teaching back then."

"It's okay, sensei," Midori told him comfortingly. "He knows everyone calls him that behind his back. He doesn't mind." Her tone got a tiny bit more menacing. "At least, he didn't used to mind. I'm not sure what he thinks of it these days, since I haven't been able to talk with him recently. That would probably be a bit of a concern for someone with a nasty, suspicious mind."

"All right," said Ayaka, growing weary of the prisoner's interjections. "What were you doing in the area around our home?"

"... lurking?" Midori replied.

"_Why_ were you -" Ayaka broke off, as Shizuru brought a partially recovered Natsuki into the kitchen, supporting her. The girl jerked her head away from the concerned look her father was giving her.

"This is the person who was following you," Ayaka said. "Do you know her?"

Natsuki looked at Midori in silent consideration. "No," she said at last, voice low. "No, I don't know her."

Ayaka frowned.

"But I've seen her before," Natsuki admitted. "When I went to visit ... a certain person, here on campus, I saw her in the area, watching everyone who was going in or out of that person's home."

"A certain person," Ayaka repeated, frown growing heavier. "And whom might this certain person be?"

"If she doesn't want to tell you -" Shizuru began to reply.

"Kazehana Mashiro," Natsuki said, voice low and tired.

Yuna frowned. "Isn't that the chick who bought up all the land around Evangeline's old cottage, after she had to vacate it?"

"Yes, she's the head of the Kazehana Financial Group," her father explained. "She's contributed a lot of funding for the repair of the academy, endowed a number of scholarships -" He paused in realization. "- and grants. Like the one Sugiura received."

"... it's a small world," Midori said, without even a trace of concern.

"All right, what's this all about?" Ayaka asked, looking from the girl who was only standing with the help of a friend to the one who was tied to a chair.

"It's kind of a long story," Midori said patiently. "Got half a year handy?"

"I'll explain what I can," Natsuki said, ignoring Midori, both her words and her very existence. "I don't know what good it's going to do for you to know, but ... well, why not?"

Midori made a surprised sound. "That doesn't sound like the Natsuki I've come to know."

"You. _Don't._ Know me," Natsuki snapped, a bit of the old hauteur returning, at last.

"That's much more like it," Midori said, approvingly.

"Ignore her," Kaede said. "Whatever she learned from the Headmaster, it was remarkably unhelpful."

"Oh, harsh! Untrue, too. I learned all sorts of sneaky stuff from the Old Man. Like, when you want to find out what's going on inside a place, it's really helpful to let the people there think they've taken you prisoner." She smiled brightly.

"Think?" Ayaka repeated, dubiously.

The knots holding the ropes tying Midori down fell away, and she stood, with a long poleaxe appearing in her hands. "Think," she agreed, smile unchanged.

For a few heartbeats, everyone in the kitchen was on the defensive - with the notable exception of Kaede, whose posture remained easy and relaxed. "Really, now?" she said.

And then Midori shrugged, let go of the axe so that it vanished to wherever it had come from, and held out her hands to the sides in a gesture of submission. "Just wanted to be sure you were taking me seriously. Can I please have my clothes back now?"

"HiME?" Ayaka repeated, doing her best to give the familiar word the same unusual inflection that Natsuki had.

"That's what Kazehana called me, when I went to see her. When she said it, it reminded me of something m- my mother said, right before she died. So I knew that she was telling the truth, about that, at least, even if I couldn't believe her when it came to anything else."

"Such a distrusting soul. Good thing you've found friends who are just as distrustful," said Midori, as she sat nearby, still in her underwear.

Ayaka gave her a look. "I take it that Natsuki-san's conversation with Kazehana-san is consonant with your own discussions with her."

Midori nodded. "Supposedly, the HiME are empowered to fight off monsters called Orphans, which started to appear back in October. The Godless Month," she added, with a mild smirk.

"So they are real," Natsuki said, somewhat indifferently. "I figured that was just more lies."

"Real enough," Midori agreed, somewhat wistfully.

"I'm confused," Akashi-sensei started to say.

"I'm mostly naked," Midori interjected.

"Excuse me?" he asked, blinking.

"Oh, I'm sorry, I thought we were making obvious statements about our current condition, and I wanted to make sure I didn't miss my turn." Midori batted her eyelashes at him and smiled sweetly.

He blinked some more, and then shook his head, noting as he did that Yuna was glaring at him. Well, nothing new there. "Ah ... if monsters are appearing, here on campus, why hasn't our surveillance system noted anything? That's ... more or less what it's _for_."

"Because they're invisible monsters from an invisible star," Midori answered, seriously. "They can't be detected through magic, only through ordinary methods. Even ordinary technology fails to make recordings." She started to warm to her topic. "In a way, it's like, they're only _there_ if you're looking at them the right way, and the only right way to look at them is through a HiME's eyes."

Into the silence that fell following this declaration, Shizuru spoke quietly. "I begin to see why you never told me about any of this," she said to Natsuki. "I probably would have thought you were nuts. Admittedly, the fact that I think that person over there _is_ nuts may be clouding my hindsight."

"Hey!"

"Don't worry. I think the whole thing is sort of nuts, too. Especially that person," agreed Natsuki.

"HEY!"

"Well, now that we're all in agreement on that subject," Ayaka said - and Midori looked momentarily like she was about to explode, but settled down into a pout, shaking her head and tapping her bare foot - "I suppose that we'll just _see_ how invisible these things are, the next time they show up."

"Good luck with that," Natsuki said. "I really don't care about any of that."

"What _do_ you care about?" Yuna asked, pointedly.

"I care about finding my mother's killer," Natsuki replied firmly. "Whatever ... whatever happened to me, back then, I want to know who did that to her - and to me. When I talked to Kazehana, she said she didn't care what I did, as long as I didn't make all of this public." She looked around, as though seeing everyone in the room for the first time, and sighed. "So much for that. Well, regardless, that's what I want to do."

"Then we'll help you to do that," said Ayaka.

Natsuki blinked. "I didn't ask for your help."

"You're getting it anyway."

Now Natsuki frowned. "Why?"

Ayaka gazed at her solemnly, then smiled. "I don't need a reason to help someone," she said, with the air of one making a quote.

"Swell," Natsuki muttered. _Altruists. Just what I didn't need._

"I think we should probably have words with this Kazehana-san," Yue said, while sipping the Tibetan butter tea that she'd started preparing a while ago. "Negi will probably want to know as much as possible when he gets back."

"I'll look into arranging a meeting," Ayaka agreed. She looked speculatively at Yue. "I don't suppose your book might have any information on this situation?"

Yue brushed back the hair over her ear, revealing the duplicate Comptina Daemonia she'd picked up on her last trip back to the Magical World. "Actually checking it now, and yes - sort of." She frowned. "A few articles about 'High-energy Materializing Entities". All very theoretical, like the ones I've got on Magia Erebea. Reading between the lines, it seems that no one has ever actually studied one ... nor does anyone seem to have any awareness of how ridiculous that name is." Her lips thinned in disgust.

"It's not so bad, is it?" Midori asked.

Yue turned to look at her with a raised eyebrow. "You like backronyms?"

"Doesn't everybody?"

"Figures," Yue muttered with a shake of her head.

"Well, speaking of Magia Erebea -" said Ayaka, pulling out her cell phone and bringing it up to her ear. "I think it's time to call in our general expert on all things strange and wondrous. Doo doo doo ... ah, hello, Evangeline-san -"

"I don't know anything," the voice came from it, loud enough to be heard by everyone in the room.

"I haven't even asked -"

"I don't know anything _about_ anything."

"But if you could -"

"I'm not leaving my bunker until those three are out of my house." Click.

Ayaka stood still with the phone still at her ear for a few moments, before she lowered it with a cough. "Well. That wasn't humiliating and uncomfortable. Not at all. So then -"

"It occurs to this one," said Kaede, who'd been listening in silence all this while, "that all of this might explain a certain event which has transpired recently, which one is not at liberty to discuss, but which has been troubling one. Further investigation may yield some results."

"... are you going to elaborate on that?" Yuna asked after a moment.

"Nope. Being enigmatic is part of one's mysterious allure." Kaede smiled cutely.

"Well, be that as it may, I hope that Kazehana-san will be willing to explain the situation in greater detail once we make our position known to her. I'm sure that a straightforward discussion will be very productive," Ayaka said.

"It'd probably help you to meet Nagi, too," Midori said.

Complete silence fell.

"Excuse me?" Ayaka asked.

"Nagi," Midori said. "He's this weird guy who seems to be involved in the whole HiME thing. Showed up right after I fought Orphans for the first time to make jokes. Kind of a pain in the ass, really."

"A complete pain in the ass," Natsuki agreed. "Worst part of it is, he seems to be pretty much invulnerable to anything I can throw at him." She exchanged a look with Midori, clearly communicating the message, "I neither like nor trust you, but I agree that it is unpleasant to have such a person involved in both our lives."

"Oh, yes, I think Negi will want to hear about this," Yuna said eventually.

* * *

Listening to the conversation in silence, hearing for the first time just what sort of a dangerous world her Natsuki had been involved in, Shizuru felt terribly, terribly conflicted. Of course, there was concern for Natsuki's welfare, but there was something else, too.

Envy.

Not of Natsuki herself, but of all these people, who apparently possessed superhuman qualities that would allow them to help Natsuki. Meanwhile, she had nothing except a limited supply of wealth, a measure of charisma, and a few useless followers to offer. All these people were going to help her Natsuki, and she couldn't do anything.

How she wished that things were otherwise. How she wished that she had power, to protect the one she cared about more than anything.  
_  
You can, you know,_ whispered a voice from she knew not where.

* * *

_About twelve hours later, this happened.  
_  
Yue had been awakened fairly early by her daughter's cries. As she held her and muttered a lullaby, she found herself musing how much this experience still didn't seem real, even though it was as concrete and certain as the child she was holding in her hands. She still felt as though she'd made a horrible, horrible mistake, but she couldn't see anywhere that she could have avoided it.

It made her wonder if her own mother had ever felt like this. Which inevitably led to imagining what her life might have been like if her parents hadn't died. Yue supposed that if you were going to imagine alternate lives, you might as well go for -

There was a flash from the bedroom window, which displayed the mansion's rear acreage. Yue quickly went over to look through it, and saw Negi and Chizuru standing there, with Negi holding onto a huge machine. She frowned. What was this?

By the time she got down to the backdoor, Negi was alone with the machine. He looked up as the door opened. "Oh, good morning, Yue," he said, looking incredibly weary. "Did I wake you? I'm sorry -"

"No, no," she assured him. "I was already up ... where is everyone else?"

Negi made a face. "We couldn't transport both this thing and the rest of the party, so they insisted that I take it back first and then have Chizuru head back to pick them up. _I_ wanted to do it the other way around, but Asuna overruled me."

Yue suspected this would be a sore point, so she didn't bring up the fact that she thought this was probably a wise course of action. "What is it?" she asked as she came up to it.

"Some sort of temporal distortion generator," Negi explained. "Whoever ran that place had it set up, connected to Father's pactio cards, so as to give a false positive reading about them being functional. I brought it back so that we could study time manipulation, since we're going to be needing that fairly shortly. When you can, you should take a look at it." He frowned. "Even with this, it's not going to be easy. I may have to call in some help."

They were going to be needing to do some time manipulation? This was the first she'd heard of anything like that. "Um, all right. So everything else is all right?"

"... no," he answered eventually. "I just dug up my father, did an autopsy on him, and reburied him. Things are definitely not all right, even without getting into the thing with mother." Before she could ask, he started to explain. "I had an argument with mother, over some things that she and Kazumi said to one another. Things are not so good on that front. She said that she's planning on taking the long way back here so we don't keep saying things that we'll regret."

"Oh," Yue said. Again, she realized that it might not be the wisest course of action to suggest that she thought that was probably for the best. And then something else occurred to her. "Kazumi?" she repeated.

Negi coughed, looked away. "Kazumi and Sayo are joining us."

Now Yue gaped. "... and _Sayo_? How did that work?"

* * *

_Eight hours earlier, this happened._

"Could you please stop calling my mother a murderer?" Asuna asked wearily. It wasn't the sort of question she'd ever expected to have to ask. Well, all right, she _had_ expected that her mother would be accused of murder at some point, but she'd never expected the accusation to come from someone who was theoretically on their side. ("Indifferent slave of the truth"? Yahright.)

"I suppose that it is a bit unfair to her," Asakura agreed as she sat beside Asuna and Negi in the prison guard's locker, resting for a while. "I don't really have any proof."

"Thank you," Negi and Asuna chorused.

"I should just focus on calling her a child molester."

"Nyargh," Asuna opined.

"Asakura-san, I'm glad that you're concerned about me, but that sort of thing isn't helpful," Negi said seriously. "I realize that what I do is ... probably wrong."

"'Probably', he says," Asakura muttered, shaking her head. "Only probably."

"The point that I was trying to make is, I'm not a child. I don't think I have been for some time, whatever the law might claim. And mother is not wholly responsible for the end of my innocence."

"How can you say that? Before all this, you had to have it pummelled into you that girls liked you."

"That's true, but I wasn't completely oblivious to the effects I had on some people, even if I didn't fully understand _why_ that happened," he pointed out. "You were there when I, for lack of a better term, flirted Takane-san to distraction so that I could win my match with her. You saw what I did."

"That's apples and oranges," Asakura complained. "Thinking tactically and -"

"Oh, to hell with it, Negi, I'm using the nuke," Asuna said crossly. "Do you really have any room to talk about wrong-doing, Asakura?"

"What do you mean?" the reporter asked, a bit startled to be put on the spot.

"You have sex with a ghost!" Asuna accused. "That's necrophilia! That's every bit as abominable as incest and child molestation!"

"Um, technically -" Sayo started to say, somewhat uncomfortably.

"Damn right it's not!" Kazumi snapped, frowning for once. "Necrophilia is sex with a dead body! We've never done that!"

"It is?" Asuna said.

"Well, technically -" Sayo started to say again.

"Then how do you do it, anyway?" Asuna asked, puzzled.

"I'm not going to -" Asakura started to say.

"Mostly I possess Asakura's body while she masturbates," Sayo interjected, just a bit loudly. As everyone in the room turned to stare at her, she continued. "And one time, I went inside another girl's mind and Asakura did stuff with her while I experienced it. But as I was saying, _technically_ -"

"Who?" Negi asked, fascinated.

"I don't kiss and tell!" Asakura snapped, face almost as red as her hair.

"... who?" Asuna asked Sayo.

"Satsuki-san," Sayo admitted. "She made this meal for us, and I ate it while I was inside of her, and then - well, it's a long story. But the point is, technically -"

"That's kinky!"

"_You've_ had sex with your six-year old time travelling daughter watching and you _dare_ to call someone else kinky?" Asakura demanded.

"Technically when Asakura and I do it it's not necrophilia but it is incest because she's my little sister's grand-daughter!" Sayo finally shouted.

Silence fell in the locker room.

"So, I guess you could say it's just as bad," Sayo added, embarrassed at her own outburst, as she regarded Asakura's stunned face.

"What?" Asakura finally asked, after a few moments of wide-eyed gaping shock. "Sayo, what - when - who - how - why -"

"You forgot where," Asuna supplied helpfully.

"Stick it, Asuna," Asakura snapped.

"I found out when you showed me your family album," Sayo said patiently. "She was much older, but I couldn't help but recognize my little sister in your grandmother's face. I didn't tell you, because ... well, I didn't think it mattered. I'm a ghost, Asakura, I will never be part of the society that makes those distinctions."

Asakura, for once in her life, was absolutely speechless. She simply sat there, on the locker room bench, hand on her chin, and stared in mute wonder at Sayo as the ghost girl floated before her.

"So do you not want to be with me anymore?" Sayo asked, in a tone devoid of anything in the way of pain, grief, or fear.

"No, I mean, yes, I mean ..." Asakura trailed off, brought the hand on her chin up to her face, and rubbed it there for a moment. "No one else on Earth can do this to me, you know?" she said.

"Is that a good thing or -"

"It's a thing," Asakura interrupted Sayo's question. "I want to be with you forever," she quickly added.

Sayo smiled sweetly. "I want that too. So you have to be nice to Negi-sensei and Asuna-san. Especially after what comes next."

Everyone else in the room blinked. "... what do you mean, after what comes next?" Asakura asked. Before Sayo could respond, Asakura's face radiated enlightenment. "Oh, no. You can't be serious. Sayo, we talked about this after that thing with Satsuki!"

"No, you talked, and I listened," Sayo observed. "But there are so many things that I never got to experience when I was alive, Asakura. So many - and I swear I won't leave you, but I want to experience some of these things." She looked bashfully at Negi, who had been silently watching all this while. "Would you be okay with that, Negi-sensei?"

"Ahhhh," he said, decisive as ever.

"Sayo, I don't -" Asakura started to say, then broke off. "I mean, I don't hate him, or anything, but -"

Sayo drifted in close, almost embracing her as much as an insubstantial creature could embrace anyone. "It's okay, Asakura, you don't have to do anything. I can possess Asuna-san and overlay her senses while she's doing it. Can't I?" she asked Asuna, abruptly.

"Ah, well," Asuna said, disconcerted by being put on the spot like this. "I've never done anything like this before, so -" Abruptly, she shifted gears. "- that's probably the best reason to do it, isn't it?" She stood up, undid her coat and let it fall, then began to unbutton her top.

"Are you sure about this?" Negi asked Asuna.

"Hey, I've had girls inside me figuratively and literally before this," Asuna said. "How bad could it possibly be?" Her blouse came off, revealing that she was wearing a sports bra, which came off itself just moments later.

"... I can't believe she actually said that," Asakura mused faintly as she watched Asuna undressing, then watched her beckoning Sayo to come in close to her. To her eyes, it looked like Sayo was sliding into Asuna, fading as she did so. She could at least take comfort that it didn't look terribly intimate.

"So this is Asuna," said Asuna's voice, speaking much more softly than she ever had in Asakura's experience of her. "I thought it would be harder, with the magic cancel - but it was really easy. Well. Now, what."

"Well, I guess we should start with something easy," said Negi, as he finished taking off his shirt, and began to open his pants. "Proper terminology is important, so you should start trying to think of this as a cock," he said, blushing a bit as the word left his mouth. Not as much as Asuna did.

Not nearly as much as Asakura did as she realized that, yes, they _were_ going to do it right in front of her. She watched in stupefied silence as "Asuna's" head bobbed back and forth as she knelt on the ground between Negi's spread legs, heeding Negi's gently voiced suggestions and the guidance of his hands. At last, the orange-haired girl pulled back, looked up at him and smiled, in that way that Sayo had that was utterly unlike anything Asuna ever did. So too was her voice just subtly different from Asuna's, and yet it wasn't Sayo's either. "I think I like the taste of, um, cock," she said, blushing.

"That's good," Negi said, smiling back at her. "Do you want to continue -"

"I want _everything_," she said, surging up to kiss him and push him back onto the bench, mounting him - not without some fumbling, Asakura saw, but managing to get it done all the same. She let out a tiny cry as his unit slid up her, and momentarily froze in position.

"Sayo-san?" Negi asked, already starting to panic.

"It's, it's okay," she said to him. "It's just ... my first time, and I was expecting it to hurt ... so of course it did. But now ... now it's feeling very good," she added, as she began to slowly rock back and forth atop him. "And I can remember how much Asuna loves it, and always has. She loves having your cock inside of her, Negiiiii, so much more than anyone else's!"

Asakura looked away, and Negi flinched. "That's, that's good to know," he said.

She grabbed his hands and brought them up to Asuna's breasts. "I want everything!" she repeated herself. "Touch me, Negi, inside and out! I love to be touched! I love warmth and coolness and pressure! I think I could even love _pain_! Let's find out! Do it to me harder!" With that, she pulled back and pulled him forward with her, so that he was pounding away on her from above, now.

Watching all this uneasily, Asakura found herself relieved that despite Sayo's exhortations, Negi wasn't being particularly brutal as he fucked Asuna's body, even though she suspected that Asuna could probably take far more than he was presently dishing out. (And, for that matter, that he could dish out far more than he presently was.) Despite his strength, he was being far more gentle than Asakura's own singular experience with the opposite sex - the oh-so-cliché sempai in his last year when she was in her first, whom she'd never heard from since - would have led her to expect.

But she wasn't interested in him. She wasn't.

And then Sayo screamed, and such thoughts vanished as she focused on the here and now, where her gir- friend was having an incredible sounding orgasm.

She was still gasping and shaking in release when Negi pulled back, out of her. Dazedly, she looked down at him, and her eyes widened. "But ... it's still hard. Why is it still hard?" Asked in much the same tone as a small child might ask why the sky was blue.

"It's okay," Negi reassured her. "It's just, well, it takes a bit more than that for me to, um, cum," he said, still using his mother's terminology.

"Well then -" she started to say.

"No, that's all right!" he said quickly. "We don't have to do anymore."

"But I want toooo," Sayo whined in Asuna's mouth, and Asakura was fairly sure that was both of them talking.

"Maybe that really is enough," she said, in support of Negi.

And then she saw the other girl's eyes fix on hers, as though she'd forgotten her presence completely, and then there was a tiny smile on her lips. _Wait, no,_ she thought she was about to say.

"Wow, so that's what it's like to be possessed," Asuna mused aloud.

"Yes, it's very unusual," Asakura heard her own voice agree, and then she was standing up and pulling off her clothes. "But I think it's Asakura's turn, now."

"Ah," Negi said, hesitantly. "I thought she didn't want to -"

"I couldn't make her do this if she was really opposed," Asakura's voice said in her own ears as her body bent down to begin kissing Negi passionately, and then to pull Asuna into the kiss as well.

A few moments later, Asakura decided that she probably should have seen this coming ... that Sayo would want to feel a man's unit doing its duty inside of her, and to experience sex with a man inside the body of the woman she cared about most. She did wish that Sayo had at least considered waiting for a safe day to find out ...

* * *

"It's a very long story," Negi said, definitely weary now. "When the others arrive, could you let them know that I'm headed for bed? I really need a few hours sleep before classes start." He started towards the door.

"Um, there's something you should probably know first," Yue started to say.

"Probably," Negi agreed without looking back at her. "And I'm really sorry, Yue, but I have just had a very long day, with lots of trauma and drama, and I've _got_ to have some sleep. Whatever it is, unless the safety of the entire world is at stake, it's going to have to wait." He went in the still open doorway.

"There's a person running around campus doing bad things under the name Nagi," Yue said.

"Sleep is overrated," said Negi as he came back out again. "What's this then?"

* * *

_About two months later, this happened._

And so began the last homeroom before the winter break. Ayaka read off the announcements. She also took the time to forcefully remind those of her classmates who were on clean-up duty that they shouldn't rush the job just because it was the start of a vacation.

Negi, who wouldn't have thought of that, nodded approvingly before moving on to asking about the girls' plans for the break. The majority of them were planning on traveling to spend time with their families. From the looks on Fuuka and Fumika's faces, they weren't looking forward to that at all. But they weren't alone in this, as several of the others were also clearly anxious about the notion. Not seeing people for nearly a year and then being thrust into close contact with them couldn't be easy.

This was especially true of those who were supposed to be telling their parents the wonderful news that their daughters had become mothers.

Some of his associates - he still couldn't bring himself to think of them as members of his harem - had other plans, of course. Kaede was heading off into the mountains for some extended practice in the art of strolling. (Negi wasn't sure why she bothered with the pretense, but didn't interrupt.) And Mana would be working hard at the shrine in preparations for its New Years ceremonies, unless some urgent business called her away. (Again, Negi didn't know who she was trying to fool.)

"Well, I hope you all have a good time, regardless of your plans," he concluded at last. "As for me, I'll be stuck here working on lesson plans." And training and training and training."If any of you need help, you know how to reach me — ah, there's the bell."

Ayaka bade everyone stand and then bow to their teacher, and he made his escape. He wouldn't see any of them again until they had English class, later that afternoon.

So what should he do with himself until then? Officially, he supposed, he should go back to the staff room and gets some paperwork done, before his next class started. But he just wasn't in the mood.

Eventually, he found himself standing in the stairwell, looking out the window at the winer scene before him. It occurred to him that his pose in doing so was more than a little reminiscent of Takahata's, when he'd seen him on the day that Negi had arrived here at Mahora. Add a cigarette to his mouth, and he could be a dead ringer.

Perhaps he should start smoking.

No, no, no, that was a disgusting habit, and he had enough bad habits already. To say nothing of the difficulty of obtaining cigarettes at his age. Well, he supposed that he could get around that with age-up pills, but he didn't enjoy using those. The sensation of being removed from his surroundings was getting worse, rather than better, each time he did so.

Besides, Takamichi would probably see him doing so, and they'd have another conversation. Their interactions were rarely very pleasant, and he would honestly prefer to avoid any dealings with the man beyond what was strictly necessary.

Negi shook his head. This wasn't the way he wanted to start his Christmas vacation. He remembered Christmases in Wales as some of the very few times Nekane had managed to get him to stop studying so compulsively, and just enjoy spending time with her and Anya.

And of course, that reminded him that he should really check and see whether Anya's flight was on time. The computer in the office would probably facilitate that. Nodding firmly, he turned around and headed back up the stairs. As he did so, he wondered why he had an inexplicable sensation of having missed out on something very good. Well, if he had, it couldn't be helped. He had responsibilities.

* * *

The streets of Mahora were filled with children made practically giddy over the thought of the impending two week break and time spent with their families. The air rang with their cheerful chatter.

"Fucking bitches," Fumika muttered darkly in Twin. Rest assured, it was even less-pleasant sounding that way.

Fuuka flinched as she followed along with her sister as they walked those joy-filled streets together. This was why she hated the holidays. Being separated from her beloved (in every sense, and frequently) sister, when they went back to their respective custodial parents, wasn't something she enjoyed, but it was just two weeks of boredom and loneliness.  
But the terribly bad mood that it always put Fumika in — now, that was hard to take. It made Fuuka nervous and uncomfortable. She felt as though her role, as the edgy and mischievous older sister to Fumika's sweet and anxious little sister, was being usurped.

Maybe talking about it would help. Fuuka opened her mouth.

"I hate them," Fumika said, still in Twin. "I hate them all. Especially _her_." The word - phrase, technically - was laced with venom.

Fuuka closed it again. Nope, that wasn't going to cut it.

It didn't help that they really didn't have anyone else to blame for the situation, this time. Well, they could be completely unfair and blame Arika, which seemed to be the solution that Fumika had picked. Fuuka was just a bit too honest for that - it had been their idea, Negi's mother had just seen through it. And she had not been happy.

* * *

_Four months earlier, this happened._

After a long day at school, lightened up by dragging Negi into the supply room for a frenzied group sex session, Fuuka and Fumika were looking forward to a quiet evening at home. They arrived at the dormitory and headed upstairs to the room that they shared with Kaede. The fact that the door to their room wasn't locked didn't really register with either of them until it was already open and they were in the foyer.

"Sit. Down," suggested Arika, standing in their room with her arms crossed under her breasts and glaring in their direction.

No fools, they, they sat and waited for the yelling to start. They weren't completely sure what had brought her here today - though Fumika, always the more paranoid, had a fairly good idea - and were both a bit disconcerted by the way she just stood there, glaring at them.

Finally, Fuuka spoke up, "Um, what did we -"

"I have just now returned from a visit with your parents," Arika interrupted. "Or rather, the individuals listed as your parents on your school records. I was very surprised to learn that your parents are highly trained ninja who specialize in impersonation. _Very_ surprised. Had one of them not broke character for a few moments to react in an extremely moralistic way to what I was telling them, I might never have known. I might also never have found myself in a pitched battle with two highly trained ninja. And while I would certainly never refuse that, it was not high on my list of things to do today."

"Oh, poot," said Fumika.

"I have already spoken to Kaede, who has offered me apologies on behalf of the Koga ninja clan, which I have graciously accepted. What do you two have to say for yourselves?"

"We're sorry," chorused Fuuka ... or rather, she would have chorused, had anyone joined in with her. Fumika was looking off to one side, pouting angrily. Fuuka started to get a rather panicky looking expression on her face when she realized that she was the only one who'd spoken.

Arika looked at them with in a less-than-amused manner. When it became clear that Fumika wasn't about to offer any further response than her silent refusal to apologize, she continued. "I agreed to speak with the parents of all of the mothers of all of Negi's children - in which category you will be numbered - to ease their concerns about your lifestyle choice. I cannot do that if you hide the fact that your parents are divorced and unaware that the two of you know each other, and go to elaborate lengths to present a false -"

"You have no room to talk!" Fumika finally decided to start speaking again, and the words burst out of her like water from a broken levy. "You present a false face to everyone! And Fuuka and I didn't ask you to talk to our parents, you volunteered to do that without asking us, so we don't have to tell you any damn thing!"

Fuuka was staring at her sister in unhidden horror, and slowly turned to look in Arika's direction, seeing an answering fury on the older woman's face. "Ah ... let's not say anything we'll regret?" she said, hesitantly - and, as soon as the words left her mouth, conscious of how utterly banal they were.

"First of all, while it is true that I do present a false face to the outside world, I do not do so to my family and loved ones," Arika said, very quietly. "You would do well to learn from me on that score. As to your second observation ..." The fallen queen drew in a deep breath. "You are of course completely correct."

Fuuka started to cry out a protest until she realized what she was about to start protesting. The disconnect left her jaw hanging. Fumika just stared angrily at Arika.

"I did volunteer to do that, without consulting you. Technically, I was also ordered to do so, but since the person who gave those orders is no longer in any position to enforce them, I suppose that doesn't matter. Be that as it may, if you do not wish me to tell your parents and step-parents about your situation, I will not do so.

"But you will."

That addendum made Fumika's jaw drop so that she matched her sister.

"You may do so in your own way and in your own time, within what I consider to be the reasonable span of the next six months. If you do not do so, however, I will have no choice but to make the facts known to them. All of the facts, including your association with each other. And I would caution you against trying to deceive me again - I will be looking for it, now. I will leave the rest in your hands." With that last, and a nod, she headed out of the room.

"This isn't fair," Fumika finally protested.

"I don't believe anyone ever suggested that it was," Arika said, and then she was gone.

* * *

_Four months later, this happened._

While Fumika's putatively "normal" hair sytle was easily achieved by removing all her hair decs and ties, letting her hair flow unfettered down her back, the French braid that Fuuka supposedly preferred wasn't anywhere as easy to put together. Without Kaede's help, they probably would have missed the trains.

"Thanks heaps, Kaede-neechan," Fumika growsed as she stood on the train station's platform, her valises resting at her side.

"You know that there'd be problems if we were late, so please don't be like that," Fuuka said entreatngly. It was so disturbing, being the one trying to keep her sister under control, instead of the other way around. "And it's just two weeks, remember? It could be a lot worse. What if they made us come back for Golden Week or summer break, too?"  
Fumika didn't say anything.

"And as soon as we turn eighteen —" Fuuka started to say.

"They are never going to let us go. They are never going to let us be." All this said without a glance in her sister's direction.

"It's not wrong to hope," Fuuka said sharply. "Don't let's part like this, Otherme," she added in Twin. "I'm hating it when it happens. And anyway, we've got magic now, so we can farspeak when we wish."

"Know you what Cunt does if she sees me in that outfit?" Fumika quietly asked, using the Twin phrase that only she ever used for 'mother'.

"Please, Otherme!"

Fumika didn't say anything as she headed over to the train doors. Only when they closed, right after she stepped through, did she turn back. Raising the fingers of her right hand to her mouth, she pressed them to the window, and moved her lips in a single silent phrase.

Fuuka duplicated the gesture. "I'm kissing you, too."

And then the train pulled away.  
_  
Just two weeks,_ Fuuka thought. _Please, keep her safe and sane for all that time. Please._ But she had a terrible feeling that whoever she was addressing either wasn't listening, or, worse, was only waiting for the chance to laugh at her pleas.

* * *

It was, she had decided, a terrible thing to peak this early in one's life.

There was a time, and the time was not long ago, when Fei had to really work in order to defeat the groups of less gifted martial artists who would occasionally challenge her. Oh, she made it look effortless. She never let even a trace of apprehension show on her face when they had at her.

But it was simply a fraud. Only in stories does a fighter face many opponents without concern for her welfare. If nothing else, the distraction that they all pose can prove fatal so easily. And so the sham confidence served its purpose, for those who were taken in by this posture were less likely to attack in the first place, and so not become that possibly deadly distraction.

Not so long ago, these had been her concerns.

Now, though? In battle now, her thoughts moved more swiftly than light itself. The moment in which a distraction might be truly deadly was no moment at all, no more than a fraction of a second so small as to be all but invisible to anyone else. The sham confidence was genuine, now. The uncertainty was gone.

And with it had gone all challenge. What joy could there be in an assured victory?

Well, she supposed that there was the joy of the artistic elegance to her movements that still remained, but that was for the observer, really. And it was problematic to cultivate. She would have to set up cameras to capture herself fighting, and watch the films to see how to make improvements, until the beauty of her technique was also perfected ... but no, that way lay madness and vanity.

She must simply face the facts. She had achieved the summit of her powers, and now she must live with the consequences of doing so — a life bereft of challenge.

"Good evening, Ku-roshi," said a voice from behind her as she sat by the frozen river thinking all of this.

Well, perhaps not wholely bereft, she reminded herself as she turned to smile at her teacher who was also her student. "Hello, Negi-bouzu," she said. "Would you join me as I sit and I muse?"

He nodded and sat down beside her. For a moment, they were united in silence, their breaths making clouds in the cold evening air.

Just as she was about to ask him why he seemed so sad this evening, Negi spoke up. "Ku-roshi, do you still like me as a person?"

She blinked. Repeatedly. Then answered, rather loudly, but certainly without even a trace of confusion or panic, "Eh? Eh? Whence comes such question?"

"I was just thinking, recently, about how things have changed when it comes to my relationships with the girls in our class," he said. With a glance at her embarrassed face, he hastened to add, "I'm, I'm not really talking about _those_ kind of relationships. I'm actually thinking about the girls with whom I don't have that kind of relationship. Like, well, you, of course."

"Of course," Fei agreed, trying to fight the blush with sheer force of will. Oh, why could her will not have the strength of her muscles? Oh, what she would give for total control of her biological functions.

"But also Haruna-san, or Misora-san, or even Satsuki-san or Zazie-san. Those two in particular ... the way that they look at me, sometimes, makes me think that they don't like me very much any more, even if they still respect me," Negi confessed, looking very unhappy.

"No!" Fei protested. "Never! Sat-chan like everybody! If she not like someone, then she not Sat-chan, but someone playing pretend!" She was honestly a bit uncertain whether the ideas she was expressing were truthful. It wasn't as though she'd spent a lot of time talking with Satsuki about the subject. When working at the Chao Bao Zi, her focus was entirely on the task at hand, and it was the same for Satsuki.

But she didn't want to think that Satsuki, one of the people she most respected and admired, disapproved of the person that she loved.

Yes. Loved. Even though she hadn't slept with him, like all those other girls, she had come to the realization that she loved him. Even though he didn't look or act like the sort of man she had ever expected to want to marry - his strength, his gentleness, even the very uncertainty and vulnerability he was showing right this very minute, all had won her over.

She wanted to give herself to him.

Shying away from that thought, Fei pressed on. "And Misora and Haruna still fight at you side! Last week, that Orphan thing, we all join hands to bring it down! They would not do that if they did not still like you." She paused, marshalling all her focus, all her equanimity. "And ... I like you. I _really_ -"

"Hey, Negi!" Asuna called out as she ran up the walkway to where they were. "We'd better hurry if we're going to be there in time to pick up Anya!"

Negi checked his watch. "Ah, you're right!" he said, getting up. "Thank you, Ku-roshi, you've been a big help," he said, smiling warmly at her.

"Anya?" Fei asked, blinking in befuddlement. Then she remembered. "Oh, right, Fire Girl. She coming for Christmas with you and Nekane?"

"Sort of," Negi said. "She's going to be helping us out with, you know, the thing."

"Oh, right, the thing," Fei agreed, nodding wisely. She waved as he and Asuna headed off briskly into the evening.

A moment later, something occurred to her. "What thing?" she asked.

Then something else occurred to her, and, as if the realization that she could easily have _asked_ that question while they were still there wasn't bad enough, this alone would have made her smack her head repeatedly. "Why does my timing suck so badly?" she asked.

* * *

So here she was, strolling around on campus while most of her friends were back at the house decorating the place in expectation of the new arrival, later that night. Since Yuna did not give two hoots about the fact that Anya was going to be visiting, or the special project that was going to be accomplished that night, she'd begged off. She supposed that she could go visit her dad, or her sister, or both of them, but she also supposed it was a little too soon to do that after her most recent break-up with her dad, and the fight she'd had last week with Natsuki.

Maybe it had been a mistake to seduce the other girl into a threesome with their dad. (Yuna was vaguely aware that it said something pretty unfortunate about her lifestyle that she could think things like that and only consider it _maybe_ a mistake.) It had certainly caused a hell of a lot of havoc when Shizuru-san found out about it and revealed that she was a HiME too. Still, she'd calmed down after a while, but Natsuki was still trying to fix her friendship with the girl, and had made it clear to Yuna that her presence wasn't welcome.

That left Yuna alone with her thoughts. It wasn't good for her to be alone with her thoughts. She had a tendency to do crazy things when that happened. It was really a lot better for everyone if she had friends around her who could at least try to calm her down and talk her out of them. Unfortunately, her nearest and dearest friendships had almost all gotten complicated in the same way as her relationship with her dad and her big sis.

But despite knowing that nothing good could possibly come of leaving her alone with her thoughts, her friends had callously let her go her own way, alone. And so, Yuna was wandering the evening streets of Mahora and looking for trouble.

"Hey, baby, you looking for a good time?" asked a masculine voice to her side.  
_  
Found some,_ she thought happily as she turned to face the individual who'd just addressed her. Then, _Good grief, the eighties live again._ The guy clearly hadn't heard that even Don Johnson shaved these days, and the shoulder pads on his bright red jacket couldn't be comfortable. And he was grinning despite a clearly missing tooth.

"Did you really just say, 'you looking for a good time'?" Yuna asked curiously.

"Yes, I did, and yes, you heard it," the vision replied.

"You realize that you're soliciting a minor, right?"

"Shit, baby, I'm not gonna report me if you don't. And face it, I'm ir-re-re-resistable," he said, making like Max Headroom for some reason.

Yuna briefly considered laughing her head off at the absurd figure before her, and then thought better of it. After all, she'd been trying to get away from complicated relationships. This sort of thing was exactly what she was hoping for. And hell, she even had one of the condoms Misa kept pressing on everyone in the harem!

"Okay, why not?" she asked, not really expecting an answer.

"Well, mostly 'cause you'll be strolling on into a meet and greet with this lowlife's three best friends, who'll help him to rape and rob you, not necessarily in that order," a girl's voice said from behind her.

Yuna saw the eighties relic's face twist in fury, which at the very least suggested that whoever had just spoken up was on the right track. She turned to look at that person and caught a glimpse of shockingly red hair over a startled looking expression. That made her turn her eyes forward quickly, just in time to see the guy coming at her.

She sidestepped his charge and drove a knee up into his stomach so that he'd bend over far enough that his upper back was in position to take one of her elbow drops. That had him on his knees, and a stomp to the ribs put him the rest of the way down. She considered saying something pithy and badass, but nothing she could think of seemed all that applicable. _I bet that never happens to Bruce Willis,_ she thought disgustedly.

"Damn," said the red-haired girl as she came forward. "Guess all those stories about you 3A girls ain't just stories. Maybe I didn't need to say anything."

"Eh, four guys at once is a little more than I can handle," Yuna replied. Three was about her limit. That was how many she'd taken on in the park, that one time. And she wasn't sure about fighting that many, either. "There's really four of them?"

"Yeah, but the other three already lit outta here, prolly," the girl noted as she bent down to determine if the guy was still breathing.

"I didn't catch your name," Yuna said. The girl was clearly another student at Mahora, and knew of 3A by reputation, but Yuna couldn't place her face.

"Didn't drop it, " the girl answered. Yuuki Nao, Mahora Girls Junior High class 2C. Pleasure's all mine."  
_  
Helllloooo,_ thought Yuna.

* * *

There was a fair chunk of change in the wallet she'd just lifted off the unconscious scuzzball, as well as a credit card. (_Whoo-hoo! Gotta do some online shopping real quick before he reports it stolen!_) Nao got herself a can of coffee out of the machine. She looked at Yuna. "So what's your poison?"

"Eh, I don't drink a lot of coffee, so just order anything and I'll be fine," the other girl replied dismissively.

Nao proceeded to pick out the cheapest brand on sale and tossed it to her. "Here's to your health," she said as she started to drink from her own, considerably more expensive can.

"Yick," Yuna noted after her first taste. "Sensei is right about this stuff."

"It's not without its charm," Nao opined.

"So do those guys really seriously go around and —"

"Eh, they're pretty much wanna-bes. I've seen 'em a couple times trying that schtick, and the girls are usually too smart to fall for it. No offense," she added unconvincingly.

"None taken."

"But, yeah, this town has a pretty lame scumbag element. More of 'em been coming outta the woodwork lately, but, I mean, they're mostly just dumbasses, you know. Not like the serious slime you get in Tokyo."

"I wouldn't know, having lived here all my life," Yuna said, dubiously. "But things can't really be that bad there, can they? I mean —"

"Oh, you poor naive soul," Nao said smirking. "Yeah, they can. Here, you get lured into alleys, beaten up and robbed and maybe they paw at you a little if they suddenly grow some stones. In Tokyo ..." She trailed off, and when she spoke again, her voice had the quality of an unhealed wound. "In Tokyo, they wait until they can get into your house, and then they go in. And they don't just paw you."

"Shit," said Yuna, wide-eyed.

"Yeah, that's the word for 'em all right. And the worst part? When they get caught, they get three heats a day and a roof over the head for the rest of their lousy lives. Yeah, shit is the word of them, all right. All of them."

"All of —"

"_Men._"

Yuna flinched at the venom in the girl's tone. "Hey, they're not all —"

"No, they are. They are. I can't believe I gotta explain this who used to be in 2A. I mean, didn't the asshole who used to teach you guys get kicked out of town for screwing around with his students? And then get reinstated for some bullcrap reason?"

"It was ... complicated," Yuna said, feeling as embarrassed as only someone who has schtupped numerous teachers can when the subject comes up. "Anyway, our new teacher is really nice." And pretty good in bed, her conscience insisted on reminding her.

"Sure, it's always complicated. They've always got an excuse. And it's always all bullshit. They all just do what they want because they want to, and any excuses they make up afterwards are complete garbage." Nao fell silent for a moment, then spoke up with obvious great reluctance. "I mean, I might give your new teacher a break, 'cause, hell, he's just a kid. But he's probably gonna gonna end up just like the rest of 'em, when his balls finally drop."  
_  
They already have,_ Yuna felt compelled to say, but she managed to restrain her tongue. After a moment of silence, she decided to broach the obvious subject. "So if you hate guys so much, do you like girls?"

Nao blinked. "Huh?"

"Girls. Women. Female of the species? What do you think about them?"

She seemed bewildered. "Well, I mean, girls are okay. A lot of 'em piss me off by being so dumb and falling for guys' BS when it's shovelled at them, but I guess it's not really their fault —"

"No, I don't think you're getting what I'm asking. You hate men, right? Obviously, you don't want to date one. So ..." She trailed off, raising an eyebrow.

"Not following you," said Nao, blank faced.

"Holy crap, and you called _me_ a poor naive soul?"

"Wait," she said, as the penny abruptly dropped. "Are you talking about —" She stopped short and made lewd hand gestures.

"It doesn't work like that when women do it," Yuna explained.

"Oh, gross, " Nao exclaimed. "I mean, do - are you saying you've _done_ that? With other girls? Like ... how?"

"It's kind of complicated," Yuna said, working her way up to an offer of a demonstration.

"Oh, gross," Nao repeated, not really listening. "Why would you want to do stuff like that to another girl, who'd hate it and you?"

"Trust me. They wouldn't hate it," Yuna assured her. However complicated her life might be, she could at least be pretty damn confident about her talents at bringing girls screaming to satisfaction. Before she could express any of this, however, their conversation was interrupted by the high, rhythmic wailing of a siren. Seconds later, a fire truck sped down the street beside them, clearly the source of the sound.

"Ah, geez, lemme guess," Nao said, raising her voice to be heard over the siren. "Some little bimbo's got her cat stuck in a tree or something?"

Yuna took a quick sniff of the air. "Nope, I can definitely smell smoke. Maybe, uh, about eight blocks from here?" It was really just a guess.

Nao blinked as she visualized the map of Mahora, almost involuntarily, then froze on the spot. "That's the university hospital," she said, in a voice drained of emotion.

And then she was running.

Yuna blinked. "Why are the ones with so much drama always the hottest ones out there?" she asked, of no one in particular. Then she tossed her can aside, neatly putting it in the trash receptacle, and was chasing after Nao.

* * *

It was fairly easy for Yuna to catch up to Nao, despite the younger girl's head start. She might not be quite in Misora or Asuna's class as a long distance runner, but for sprints, she was right up there with the best in their class. And once she'd caught up, Nao wasn't moving so quickly that she couldn't keep pace. "So what's the deal?" she yelled.

"My mother! She's in that hospital!" Nao shouted back.

"Well, then, she'll have evacuated with the rest of the patients, the doctors are gonna help her and -"

"She's a coma, you idiot!" Nao roared as she tried, more or less vainly, to pull ahead.

Yuna considered snapping that, in that case, the woman in question would obviously have been evacuated first. That was how things were supposed to work, in hospitals - and then, even as she thought that, she remembered everything else in the last few months that had very definitely and deliberately gone the exact opposite of the way that things were supposed to go.

She was perfectly aware that there was an almost literal diabolus ex machina out there, making life harder for certain people than it had to be. Was this another one of those incidents? To be honest, she sort of hoped so - incidents like that made for a lot of stress, and she knew a really good way to relieve stress.

By the time they got to the hospital, the police, fire department and ambulance service were already there. A cordon had been set up to keep the looky-loos and gawkers a safe distance away from the unfolding situation. Naturally, Nao, who didn't seem to be the most subtle of girls, ran right at it, straight into the arms of a campus cop.

"Lemme go!" Nao politely requested at the top of her lungs. Okay, not so politely.

"I'm sorry, young lady, but you cannot go in there right now, it's -"

"It's all right," Yuna said, holding up the badge with the Ala Alba insignia that they'd had made a while ago. "She's with me."

The guard looked dubious, but he released Nao. Without sparing even a glance back at Yuna, the red-haired girl ran into the hospital, and Yuna quickly followed her - getting in just before a whole row of windows on one of the hospital's upper floors exploded outward, raining glass down on the ground. Fortunately, the people who'd set up the cordon had been pretty cautious when they did so, and none of it landed on anyone in the crowd outside of it.

"Nice badge," Nao snapped as Yuna caught up with her again as they reached the staircase. "I didn't know Mito Komon was being played by a teenage girl these days."

"It's not a f- not a fake badge," Yuna snapped, restraining herself from vulgar utterances with some difficulty. "Where's your mom?"

Moments later, as they emerged in the coma ward, which looked to be where the fire had started (of course) Yuna saw that Nao's mother was lying motionless in a bed. No other patients to be seen in the area. (Of course.) Nao yanked the IV out of the older woman's arm and started to pull her out of the bed, with Yuna's help. With the two of them present, there wasn't going to be any problem.  
_  
Which doubtless offends the diabolus something fierce,_ Yuna thought smirkingly as they made their way down the stairs.  
Perhaps it did. Perhaps that was why the stair onto which she was stepping down caved in, sending her tumbling forward and down the rest of the staircase. Nao shrieked and managed to pull her mother's limp body backwards so that she wasn't carried down with Yuna, but the weight was too much for her.

"Sonuva -" Yuna groaned as she managed to lift her head to look up at her. The scream of agony in her leg suggested that her ankle was at least sprained from the impact, and she had a feeling that she was probably going to get a concussion out of the deal.

"Help!" Nao shouted.

"Little busy," Yuna shouted back at her.

"Somebody! Anybody! Help me!" Nao was shrieking.

"Well, all right," said a voice Yuna had grown to know and loathe this last month. It was coming from everywhere around them, rather than any place in particular. "But you'll be risking what you value most, you know."

"... no, don't -" Yuna started to say.

"I'll do anything!" Nao shouted.  
_  
Shit,_ Yuna thought. _Am I under a curse to keep discovering these HiME chicks?_

* * *

_A few minutes later, this happened._

Asakura wasn't sure what the logic of putting the house's landline in the kitchen was. Had the former owners spent most of their time in here, rather than in the living room? If so, then why were the appliances so out of date? Well, all these were questions she had no way of answering, yet, so she settled for answering the phone when it rang while she was raiding the refrigerator's supply of deviled eggs that Konoka had made for Anya's party. "Yo," she said.

"Hey, Asakura," said Yuna's voice on the other end. "Normally, I'd waste some time flirting with you, but I'm in a little bit of a rush, here, so I'll just get to the point - is Midori there yet?"

Irked by the implication that time spent flirting with her was time wasted - even though she had firmly turned down all of Yuna's propositions - Asakura repaid the insult by hemming and hawing. "Well, hmm, I think ... no, um ... yeah, actually, she _is_ here, back in the living room, making a pest of herself like always. Wassup?"

"I found another one," Yuna said.

Asakura nearly dropped the tray. "Another - are you under some kind of curse or something?"

"That's what I keep wondering. Anyway, I've talked her into coming with me to meet Midori, so it's good that she's there. Is Negi back yet? Actually, fuck Negi, is _Konoka_ back yet? I've got a broken ankle and a woman in a coma that she should have a look at."

"What did you do?" Asakura asked, appalled.

"... I'm just gonna pretend you didn't ask that, all right?"

* * *

_At roughly the same time, this happened._

Asuna saw her first, as she came through the Arrivals gate into the baggage claim area. Pointing her out to the others, she started waving first, and saw the moment of recognition on Anya's face when she saw them, as well. She found herself wondering whether Anya had had any trouble on the plane with that hat of hers ...

And then, almost immediately, wondered what was the matter with the little girl.

Anya walked slowly in their direction, without waving back or saying anything until she was right in front of them, pulling a small suitcase on rollers behind her. "Um," she said at last, smiling nervously. "Hi, Negi. Hi, Konoka-san. Hello, you," she added with a short glance in Asuna's direction.

Negi laughed. "Well, this is quite a change from the way you introduced yourself last time," he said. "No drop kick?"

"Would you like me to drop kick you?" Anya asked, bristling and getting back to her old self. It only lasted a moment before she looked around. "Did Nekane not come with you?" she asked.

"No, unfortunately," Konoka said. "She wanted to, but she decided it was more important to stay back and take care of the baby."

"Ah, makes sense," Anya mused, easing a bit. Her anxiety was promptly replaced with aggravation, though. "I still can't believe she was pregnant back then and didn't tell me. I would have come with her, not stayed there and looked after her house! Her house isn't important, she is!"

"I agree, I agree," Negi agreed. "Do you have any bags -"

"No, I put everything into a space fold in this one," she interjected. "I did do the practice that you suggested."

"Good, that'll make things easier," Negi said, relieved. He gestured towards the exit, and they started walking as a group. "I think we'll probably start the ritual as soon as we get home."

"Eh? But what about the party?" Konoka complained. "I was really looking forward to the party, first," she said, glancing at Anya surreptitiously and licking her lips in the same way.

Negi gave her an annoyed look, but Anya, oblivious to all this, replied aloud. "A party sounds like fun, but most of all, I need to talk to Nekane as soon as possible."

"Did something happen to her house?" Asuna asked suspiciously.

"No!" Anya protested quickly and just a bit too forcefully. "I, no, of course not. The sale of the place can probably go through as planned, if she really wants to live here, now. There won't be any problems with that." She drew a deep breath. "I even cleaned the chimney," she added, as though this was a major development.

"Well, good," said Negi, wholly deaf to the subtext.

* * *

_Again, at roughly the same time, this happened._

Her mother was stinking drunk and lying flat on her stomach in front of the TV, watching an old video tape of some lame comedians from a hundred years ago. Her step-father was out somewhere, doing something. (More likely someone - and by doing, she meant 'tricking them out of their money or valuables', not having sex.) All told, Fumika thought it was starting to look like it might be one of the best nights she'd ever spent in what was supposedly her home, since her mother was too far gone to make any demands of her.

Of course, even as she thought that, while bringing in the soup and salad that she'd made for herself, the universe proceeded to mock her hopes. The woman in front of the TV, despite the fact that her sense of smell should surely be ruined by the sheer volume of fumes that had gone up her nose over the years, lifted her head and glared blearily in her direction. "Izzat mine?" she asked. Well, she phrased it as a question.

"Yes," said Fumika. "I thought you might like some dinner." She carried the bowl and plate over to her and set them down beside her. Her mother grunted, which was about the thanks Fumika could expect.

It wasn't so bad, she told herself. There was still more soup in the pot, and she could make another salad, and it was just a little ti-

There wasn't any warning, just the sensation of the bowl slamming into the back of her head, and the feeling of soup splashing on her back in general. The shock of the hot soup on her skin almost drowned out the pain of the impact. She managed to keep her feet.

"This soup sucks!" her mother sneered. "You made a sucky soup! Whadafuck is wrong wit'you? Spend all that money sending you to 'at fancy schmancy private school, and you can't even make soup? How are you ever going to get a man?"

"Your method, mayhap, of getting pregnant and entrapping one," Fumika answered in Twin. As soon as the phrases left her mouth, she knew that it had been a mistake. But she was so angry. Her mother and step-father didn't spend a dime on her education, it was entirely covered by a scholarship offered to the family of former faculty members, like her long-dead grandfather. And her soup? Her big sister and Kaede-nechan and even Negi all loved her soup. _Satsuki_ had offered her a compliment.

"Don't you babble at me in that sick lingo of yours!" her mother roared, starting to force herself to her feet.

Fumika wanted to run, but there was nowhere in the apartment that she could fortify against her mother - no doors that locked, no large dressers to be put against the door to block it off. And all the ninja tricks that Kaede-nechan just went flying out of her brain as her mother stomped in her direction.

"Well?" the woman roared as she stood in front of the girl over whom she manage to tower, despite not actually being that much taller.

"S-sorry for making bad soup," Fumika trembled out. "I'll do better -"

The first slap interrupted her. "You, do better?" sneered her mother. "That'd be the day! You're worthless!" Slap! "Stupid!" Slap! "Lazy!" Slap! "Country full of fuckin' lolicons, and you're never going to get a man!" she jeered, and didn't bother to slap for emphasis this time.

Her face stinging and tears starting to flow, Fumika continued her evening of bad ideas. "Shows what you know, I already did!" she yelled. "And he's a better man than you could ever have!" Again, as soon as the words were out of her mouth, she realized that had been an extremely unwise thing to say, and she cringed at the expected slap.

It didn't come. Instead, her mother stared at her with a befuddled expression, which soon morphed into a gleefully wicked smile. "You little whore," she said, in the sweetest tone imaginable. "You fucked one of your teachers, din't you?" She reached out to grab a pinch of the cheek she'd been slapping just a few moments earlier. "Diiiiinnnnn't you?" she asked, squeezing tightly.

"Let go!" Fumika cried, not denying it.

"Yeah, you did," her mother gloated. "I'm gonna sue that lousy school for everything it's got, and whichever one of those stuck-up old bastards it was for everything _he's_ got!"

"No!" Fumika shrieked. And then she said the most unwise thing she could possibly have said under the circumstances. "Leave Negi alone!"

"Negi?" she sneered. "Issat his ... name ... wait a minute." Her mother slowed down, releasing her hold on Fumika's cheek as she frowned, visibly struggling to remember something. The look of shock on her face told Fumika when she had. "Negi? Negi ... as in the goddamn ten-year old boy?! You fucked a ten year old boy!"

This time, at least, Fumika had enough of a sense of danger to get out of the way of the uppercut that came smashing her way.

"Fuckin' pervert!" her mother shrieked. "I didn't raise no fuckin' kiddy diddling pervert!"

"You didn't raise me at all, Cunt!" Fumika shrieked, mixing Japanese and Twin in a way that Fuuka never would have.

"That is _it_!" the woman said, not really listening. "I'm calling Marimoto-san, he'll give me good money for your organs, finally get some _worth_ out of you, where the hell is that phone - ah, there!"

Just as she reached out to pick up the phone, another hand, one wearing a gray fingerless glove, shot out to cover it. Startled, she looked up.

"I wouldn't do that if I were you, grandma," said the half-masked man who was staring down at her.

* * *

"You're really Nagito?" Fumika asked, quietly awed at the man's skill with ropes, which he'd just demonstrated by quickly and efficiently tying her mother up and gagging her so that she had no choice but to just sit and make angry noises.

"Yes, mother," the pink haired man, dressed in a blue variation on the ninja jumpsuit that she and Fumika always wore. "This is a crucial period in your history, and so both I and ... the other ... have been sent back to watch over you during it."

Fumika blinked. It wasn't hard for her to deduce the identity of 'the other', but she was honestly a little bewildered why he'd talk like that about Fuuka's son. They were half-brother/cousins, after all. They should get along just like she and her sister did. (Well, maybe not just like. She wasn't Haruna, after all.) But there were other things on her mind right now.

"And she ... she was really going to sell me to black market organ dealers," she said, very slowly, turning to look from her son, who looked to be older than she herself, to her mother. Who continued to make the noises of protest and anger that she made all this time.

"She was going to call her loan shark, who does have ties to that segment of the local Yakuza organization which does that sort of work. What would have happened then isn't clear, but -"

But Fumika wasn't really listening anymore. "You hurt me," she said to her mother, voice rising with every word. "You hurt me, and you lie to me, and you keep me away from the people I love, and now, now you're going to kill me! For nothing!" She was crying now. "I hate you! I hate you so much! You don't wish I wasn't your daughter half as much as I wish you weren't my mother!"

"Mother," Nagito said, trying to hold her attention. "Please, please calm down. This person will never threaten you or Fuuka-bachan again. You don't have to -"

"She's never going to let me go!" Fumika shrieked. "She's never going to let me be! You think I can just walk away from her, and let her go on plotting against your aunt and me? Against Negi, too, now?" She seemed to grow calmer, very suddenly, but it didn't touch her eyes as she stared at him. "Is that the way of the ninja that you were taught?"

"No," he said, looking away. "It isn't. But then, you should let me -"

"I _want_ to do it," she said, hands clenched. "I want, I've wanted it since I found out what she kept from me. I've been dreaming of this moment for years." Without another word, she turned and went into the kitchen, returning seconds later with a butcher knife which she held with practiced ease. "Your role comes later," she added as she walked past him, to where her mother was staring up at her with horrified eyes.

"If you have any last words, say them now," Fumika said to her.

"NNNNNNNNNGGGGGGHHHHH!" her mother said.

"Oh, that's right, you can't," Fumika said, then giggled.

Then stabbed. And stabbed. And stabbed and stabbed and stabbed and stabbed and stabbed and stabbed and stabbed and stabbed and stabbed and stabbed and stabbed and stabbed and stabbed and laughed and stabbed and laughed and stabbed and laughed and stabbed and laughed and stabbed and laughed and laughed and laughed and laughed.

When she finally let the laughter die down, she finished off by pushing her face down into the red ruin that had been her mother's upper torso, bathing her face in the blood, before pulling back and looking at Nagito to spit the words, "Now fuck me."

"What?" he said weakly.

"Fuck me," she repeated. "The story is, someone broke in, tied her up and stabbed her, then raped me. We're at the raped me part of the story. You're going to make it look good. Now fuck me. Your daddy fucks his mommy all the time, don't you want to be like him?"

With a deep sigh of obvious regret, he unbuttoned his pants and came over to her, pulling up her skirt and her panties to the side as he pushed up into the orifice from which he'd emerged into the world. Obedient to her commands, he took her hard, sometimes causing her to slam her face into the floor and bruise it, bruising her with his grip and making scratch marks on her knees and elbows where they ground against the floor. A second time, her face went into the gaping wounds she'd opened up in the corpse's torso, before at last they were done, and he pulled back to leave her there.

"Make sure you break the lock on the door," she murmured as she lay there beside the corpse.

"It's broken," he said, walking away. "I suppose all the power on Earth can't change destiny."

"Huh?" she asked, but he was already gone. Shaking her head, she lay down again to wait discovery.

Then the phone rang. She wasn't in any position to answer it, so she let it ring. Eventually, the answering machine, one of those old models that played the recording as it was being made, picked it up.

"Fumika!" cried her sister's voice, sounding joyous. "I've got wonderful news! I told daddy everything, and he's okay with it! Really! He wants to meet, um, well, he wants to be part of both our lives! Isn't that great! Call me back, okay?"

A moment after the beep signalled the end of the recording, Fumika finally began to laugh hollowly.

Clearly, she was going to have to take care of the other side of this all by herself.

_Shortly thereafter, this happened._

"He's so tiny," Anya marvelled as she gazed at the infant in Nekane's arms.

The older woman smiled gently. "He's actually growing very quickly," she said. "But yes, babies tend to be very small. I remember when both you and Negi were this small."

She was expecting Anya to become a bit embarrassed at the reminder of her youth, when she was so desperate to be seen as a grownup. She was a bit surprised at the way that the younger girl went very pale, and the way that she glanced at the door to Nekane's bedroom, which was firmly closed.

"Ummm," Anya said at last. "Nekane-nechan, are we in private right now?"

Nekane blinked. "Yes, of course." The door was set up to lock whenever it was shut, the room was soundproofed so that she wasn't to be unsettled by the sounds of debauchery elsewhere in the house. And she'd swept for bugs earlier today, and set up wards against scrying every morning. "Is something the matter?"

"Well. Well. Um. Yes," Anya finally said. "You, you know how you asked me to look after your house?"

"Did you burn it down?" Nekane asked, curiously.

"No!" Anya nearly shrieked. "Why would you ask that? Why does everyone think I'm some kind of pyromaniac? Geez! That's, that's ... okay, there was a small fire, but I took care of it, and I fixed everything, but ... but, you see, while I was doing that, I ... I found this cache inside your bedroom wall, and there were books in there ..."

Nekane's face didn't lose her smile, but it went very fixed at the mention of the cache. "I see. Did you read my poems, Anya? What did you think of them?"

"I guess, I guess they're great poems, I mean you wrote them, right, so they have to be good." Anya looked up at Nekane with a frightened expression, flinching at what she saw there. "But you know that's, that's not what I'm talking about."

"You read my confession," Nekane said, very quietly, very patiently. "It was only supposed to be read in the event of my death, Anya."

"I didn't understand why you thought you were going to die, and I didn't know what you were going to confess, so ..." Anya finally broke off, as though her words had raced so far ahead of her thoughts that they had to hold on for a moment to let the hindmost catch up. "Does Negi know?" she asked, voice almost inaudible.

"No," Nekane said, firmly, hands that were holding her baby twitching, as though she wanted to reach out to take hold of Anya's shoulders and hold her firm. "No, he does not know. He must never know. The truth would destroy him. You have to realize that, Anya."

"Then why did you write that -" Anya started to ask, looking completely confused in addition to the obvious anguish she was feeling.

"In the hopes that, if I died before I could explain myself to ... to those who needed an explanation ... they'd be able to receive one, someday. But it was never meant for Negi's ears. At least, not as he is now." Nekane considered Anya for a moment, before she patiently asked, "Have you told anyone else about this?"

"No, of course not!" Anya quickly came back. "I wouldn't -"

"Are you going to?" Nekane asked, still very patient.

Anya looked away. "I ... I think Negi deserves to know. I don't ... I don't think it will destroy him. He'll be hurt, he'll be upset, he'll need help -"

"- from you," Nekane interjected.

"Well, yes," Anya retorted, blushing brightly. "He, he's always needed me. Why shouldn't he go on needing me?"

"... I suppose that I can't really argue with that logic," Nekane said. "But you'd agree that now is not the right time."

"No, not when he's about to do something like this," Anya agreed. "But later. After the ritual is done, maybe. Then, I think we both should tell him the truth. I really do think he'll be okay, eventually."

"Hm," Nekane said. "Perhaps you're right. But before that, I think there are some things you need to know about this ritual that haven't been explained to you as yet."

"Eh?" said Anya, frowning. "It seems like a fairly straightforward cooperative spell, from the notes that Negi sent me."

Nekane gave her an amused look as she got up from her chair and carried Nigel over to his cradle, setting him down as she spoke. "And have you cast many cooperative spells, Anya?"

"Well, no, but I understand the theory -"

"Anya. Dear. Please be honest. Do you really want to stand here before me and claim that you're good at cooperating with people?"

For a few moments, Anya looked as though she were struggling to do just that. Her face made a number of interesting expressions, before finally settling into a pout as she looked away from Nekane's patient regard.

"It's all right, Anya," Nekane said, favoring her with a smile. "You're a strong-willed girl, and so it's only natural that you might have trouble doing what someone else tells you to do rather than what you want to do. And that's all right. I like people like that." Nekane watched Anya's pout turn into a hopeful face. "And so does Negi, since most of his friends are like that," she added.

The girl's face went from a hopeful look to a frown. "Negi likes jerks," she grumbled. "I'm not a jerk!"

"No, you're not," Nekane agreed. "You're a sweet girl ... but you are willful."

"... well, yes."

"Konoka is willful, too, and she's not all that good at cooperative magic either," Nekane added.

Remembering a certain phone call, Anya was fully prepared to agree on the subject of Konoka's willfulness.

"But we found a solution to that problem, something that would allow the energy of the spell to move freely among us without our conscious guidance - the act of becoming more intimate with one another."

Anya stared. "Wait," she finally asked. "Are you saying ... are you talking about -" She broke off.

"Sex," Nekane supplied.

Anya's face was a picture. "But," she said. "But, but, but ... Negi is your -"

"Oh, no, Anya," Nekane continued lying, feigning surprise and horror. "Not that! Negi and I have a different sort of connection, that between parent and child. He even thinks of me as more of his mother than his actual mother. That made the work-around completely unnecessary, when it came to him and me. But it did help to unify me with Konoka and Yue." She came forward to stand very close to Anya, and smile down at her. "And I think it would help you, to unify with me."

Anya's face continued to be a picture. "But, but ... I mean ... I'm too young, aren't I?"

"I wasn't much older than you when I had Negi," Nekane reminded her. "And that ... didn't work out very well, but this will be different." She knelt down so that their faces were nearly touching. "Do you really hate the idea of being with me in this way, Anya?" she asked, tenderly.

The young girl swallowed, and, after a long silence, whispered, "No."

And then she was being kissed, rather forcefully, and in a daze she felt herself being lifted up and carried over to the bed, being laid down on her back and feeling the fastenings of her dress undone, then fingers on her body, all over it. Then more than fingers.

Moments later, as her neck contorted in response to the sensation of Nekane's lips on a part of her body heretofore untouched by anyone, even herself, she found herself looking at Nigel's cradle, and blushed in shame as she realized that she could see his green eye staring at her through a hole in the cradle's boards. She knew that it was ridiculous, that he couldn't understand what he was seeing, but she felt so strange, nonetheless.

Stranger than she should feel. Something seemed odd about something she'd just seen, but as she was brought to climax, she couldn't imagine what it might be.

What felt like hours later, she was shuddering in release in Nekane's arms. "That was good, wasn't it?" Nekane asked.

"Uhhhh," Anya answered in lieu of anything clever.

"Yes, clearly it did," Nekane chuckled. Then she looked melancholy. "You are almost as dear to me as Nigel or Negi, you know that, right?"

"Yes, yes," Anya said, nodding. "D-do you want me to ..."

"That's not necessary. You just rest now."

"Hokay," Anya agreed, and soon was sleeping.

"Almost as dear," Nekane repeated. "Almost."

It was truly a sad thing, to be almost as dear.

* * *

_At roughly the same time, this happened._

It was strange to be going home again, Haruna decided. She hadn't gone back for summer holidays (obviously) or for Golden Week, or even for the previous year's winter break. There had always been so much else to do, with the library exploration club, or the manga club, or ... just so much else to do. But now here she was, heading home, simply to get away from the drama.

Which would involve exposing herself to a different kind of drama, she admitted ruefully as she walked out of the station and past a housing development where she could hear a routine domestic argument being resolved with kicks, punches and called-out attacks. But after all, running away from one's difficulties was the essence of the Saotome special technique.

It wasn't that she didn't love her family, but she was well aware that she didn't really fit in all that well. As the child of her parents' reunion, they'd both probably been hoping for another boy. Certainly her father had never shown any interest in educating her in the family style in the way the late Tendou Soun had taught _his_ youngest daughter. It was probably for the best. She was a lover, not a fighter.

Or rather one who was devoted to the arts and didn't actively seek out physical confrontations, of any type, since, well, um. Great. A perfectly good cliché, ruined forever.

Feeling a bit like Tora-san in the early stages of one of his movies, she made her way through Nerima's streets to the old house that her brother had inherited after his father-in-law finally passed away. It was a charming, rustic place, with the dojo sign proudly proclaiming it as the home of the Tendou Saotome Tendou Saotome _and_ Tendou School of Unrestricted Grappling. She had half-expected to see the new name struck through, but it seemed to be sticking.

"Tadaima," she announced as she came in the front door.

No one responded.

Were they all out? That didn't seem likely. Unless there was one of those things that happened way too often where the whole gang of idiots went off to some exotic foreign locale where everyone inexplicably spoke perfect Japanese (except when they didn't) to fight someone. In which case, hey, she'd have the house to herself! Yay. No drama!

Also probably no food, though. So she wandered in from the foyer after she took off her shoes, and that was when she heard it. A sort of giggly noise. Suddenly alert, she started to slowly move in the direction from which it had come.  
Which turned out to be her room. Drawing in a deep breath, she flung open the door and jumped in with a loud kiai.

"Oh, hello, Harunaaaaaaaa-chan," said her mother as she was rapidly fucked in both the vagina and the anus by her two sons. "We weren't expecting you until laaaaater."

Haruna stared.

* * *

To Haruna's mind, it looked like this - she was seated in a chair, hands over her face, in the center of a bright light surrounded by darkness, from which voices could be heard speaking to her.

"You see, Haruna-chan, your teacher's mother decided to pay us a visit, and apparently your friend, who has the same name as me and who looks a bit like I do, had told her about myself and Ryouga-kun," her mother's voice explained.

"Uh-huh," Haruna said.

"Auntie was very upset at first, but then Arika-sama calmed her down enough to listen to me when I said that I understood how it felt to have to hide something like that," Kasumi's voice picked up the explanation. "And then it sort of came out that I started sleeping with my father soon after Ranma-kun came to live with us."

"Uh-huh," Haruna said.

"Which was kind of a surprise to all of us," said Kodachi's voice. "Especially me, since I was under the impression that such matters were only common among families of a certain stature, such as mine."

"Uh-huh," Haruna said.

"Which freaked me out when I found out about it," said Nabiki's voice. "But I adapted, and Kunou-baby likes it when I pretend to be his mom. So I was already kind of half-way there."

"Uh-huh," Haruna said.

"Is fairly common among Amazons," said Xian-Pu's voice. "If only man who can defeat Amazon girl is man who defeated her mother, then old marriage nulled and new marriage established. And mothers often teach daughters how to satisfy men, by example."

"Uh-huh," Haruna said.

"I was shocked. Just shocked," said Ryouga's voice. "But ... but it really sort of made me happy, too. And because we were all, all going to be together, Akane-san was willing to -" His voice descended into senseless blubbering.

"Uh-huh," Haruna said.

"Ryouga, just so we're clear on this, but this is all you're getting. I'm still pissed off about the whole P-chan thing," said Akane's voice. "I mean, it's not like you disguised yourself as a young boy and lived with us or something, but that's still sort of disgusting, don't you think, Haruna?"

"Uh-huh," Haruna said, ignoring Ranma and Nabiki's inexplicable bout of coughing.

"I think this is all disgusting," said Ukyou's voice.

Haruna lowered her hands and looked up. "... but you're still here, right?" she asked.

"Well, I'm not going to let any of them get further with Ranchan than I am!" Ukyou-san's voice protested.

"Right," said Haruna, who let out a long sigh. "I give up. I give in. I surrender. You win." She began to undress. "Who wants some of this?"

* * *

"Where's dad, anyway?" Haruna asked a little later, as she sat on the couch and enjoyed some rather good oral sex while running her hands through the red hair of the one doing it to her, and while dully watching Akane fucking Sonma, her twelve-year old son.

"He's off trying to make amends with his other daughter," her mother answered as she sat beside her, getting oral sex from Kasumi.

Haruna blinked. "You know about Satomi, too?"

"Who's Satomi?" Nodoka asked, confused. "Didn't I tell you about your father's affair with that Kasugano woman, and the daughter she had? The World Warrior girl?"

"... nope," Haruna said, by now completely resigned to her life never making sense again. "What about Ryouga's wife?"

"She's training her pigs."

"Ahhhhhh," said Haruna, both in what she thought was comprehension and in pleasure as an orgasm was ripped from her. (As it happened, she was quite wrong about Hibiki Akari, who would never engage in bestiality. But she wasn't in a good place, right then, so perhaps she should be forgiven for assuming the worst.)

* * *

_Fifteen minutes later, this happened_

With Nekane just a step or two behind her, Anya marched confidently down the stairs from the kitchen into the large basement, where she found Negi, Konoka and Yue waiting for her ... well, waiting for her and considering the large glass globe, half filled with rich brown earth, which sat on a plinth in the middle of the room. "Okay," Anya said. "I'm as ready as I'll ever be for this."

"I know the feeling," Negi agreed, glancing from her to the sphere.

"It's not really that complicated a spell, is it?" Konoka asked dubiously. "I mean, Eva-chan said that most powerful magicians have a resort like this, and -"

"What I said was that most _have_ one," said a voice sharply from the shadows of the basement. Anya felt herself tense up as Evangeline slouched out of those shadows. Depowered or not, it wasn't easy dealing with someone who had, quite literally, been a threat her mother had leveled at her to get her to behave. But she forced herself to stay calm and listen - from what Negi had told her, the loss of her power had not meant the loss of her wisdom.

"Not that they _make_ them. Most acquire them through, and do so through ... methods other than legitimate purchase," Evangeline elaborated. "And even those who do make them generally settle for a time displacement that isn't quite as insane as a day outside equalling a _month_ inside." This was said with a glare at Negi.

"It's not that much more than what you did," Negi demurred politely.

"What I did, I did after centuries!"

He chose to ignore that comment, instead looking at his colleagues. "But I admit that there is a fair amount of risk involved with this spell, and that's why I'm giving you all the chance to veto this operation, right now. If you want more time to practice, run simulations, what have you, we can do that. But once we start, we're not going to be able to stop."

"Does he do this a lot?" Anya asked Yue. "Give people who've come all this way the chance to _avoid_ doing what they came here to do?"

"I suppose you could say that he does have that tendency," Yue agreed.

"I'm standing right here," Negi reminded them.

"You're standing right there, and you're helpless without us, you know that?" Anya said, smiling brightly. "Let's go!" she added, punching the air.

With that out of the way, they circled the globe - Negi, then Nekane, then Konoka, then Anya, then Yue, then back to Negi - with Evangeline standing back and watching. Each quietly spoke their activation code, and then, in unison, the first words of the spell.

Anya flinched as the weight of it hit her. It was a _lot_ more than she'd been expecting. The worst part was that nobody else looked to be as bothered by it as she was. Well, she wasn't about to complain when she was the one who'd insisted on doing it now, so she forced herself to stay calm, so that they wouldn't be able to tell that she was being bothered. She set her jaw and kept speaking the words confidently and forcefully, the way that she always did everything.

It didn't help. It was getting worse and worse, even as she saw the first seal take form on the surface of the bottle. Instead of just a weight, now, it was a heat, as well. That shouldn't have been a problem. She was excellent at flame-based magic, better than Negi could even hope to be. It should be easy for her to disperse the heat, yet no matter how she tried to do so, it kept rising.

Nobody else seemed bothered by it, either. Wait, no, Nekane looked concerned. Okay, that meant she had to be feeling it, too, so Anya quickly flashed her a smile of confidence as she kept trying to reduce the heat.

Nekane didn't smile back.

Wait.

No.

That was wrong.

Why wasn't she smiling at her?

Why was it getting so hot, so very very very hot, especially with Nekane looking right at her as it did so, and no, no, it couldn't be, she wouldn't do this, not to her, not after what they'd done, not even -

Wait.

No.

What was that smell?

Oh. It was the scent of human flesh burning.

Her lips moved, in agony, and she made a sound that might have been "Negi" as she turned to look at him, saw the terror in his face that she'd somehow missed before, knew that he didn't know what was happening, that she wasn't going to be able to warn him, and then there was nothing, nothing but the fire that had been made too powerful for her to control.

She burned

* * *

"_Anya_!" Negi shrieked as she seemed to collapse in on herself, flames consuming her from within..

"Focus!" Evangeline's voice came from the side. "Unless you want the girl's sacrifice to be pointless, **focus**!"

He saw Konoka and Yue close the circle with faces that looked, he was sure, every bit as horrified as the one on his own. The words kept coming, and the spell carried on ...

And just one moment later, the final seal appeared on the globe, signalling that the resort's magic had been bound into it. The weight lifted from him as it did, and he felt himself collapse as he watched his friends drop as well. Yet they were each all right.

But Anya was not. There was only a pile of ashes where she had been standing.

"... why?" he asked. "_Why?_"

He felt Nekane wrapping him an embrace. "I'm so sorry, Negi," she said. "What a horrible, horrible accident ..."

* * *

_A few hours later, this happened._

"All right," said Negi, fatigue and grief making him look so much older as he stood beside the resort's "bottle" and looked up at the crowd waiting to enter it. "Everyone who is going in needs to have their token." He held up the one of the tiny silver shillings that Nekane had enchanted to serve as the resort's access keys. "Even when you're inside, you need to hold onto it, since it's also the only way that you'll be able to get out, again."

"Okay, hold it," said the red-haired girl whom Yuna had dragged back to the house earlier this evening - Nao, he thought her name was. She was holding one of the shillings, her eyes moving from it to Negi then back again. "This is going to let us go inside that ... thing, there?" Now her eyes went to the bottle, which had seen some construction since it was established.

"That's right, Nao-san," he said patiently.

"... this is nuts," she said. "Does it bother anyone else that this is nuts?" she asked.

"Eh, you kind of get used to the nuttiness after a while," Midori explained with a smile as she stood with her fellow HiME, wearing looser clothes to hide the early stages of her pregnancy.

"Not particularly," Natsuki disagreed, to Shizuru's approving nod. "I just want to say that we're only going in there to take advantage of the extended time for training, not anything else." That was delivered with a sharp look in Yuna's direction. The target proceeded to roll her eyes.

"Definitely not," agreed Okuzaki Akira, the young ninja HiME that Kaede had discovered and then brought in to their unit in exchange for a promise of protection against her - or, technically, 'his' - family.

"... what 'anything else' are we talking about, here?" Nao asked, bewildered.

"You'll find out soon enough," Natsuki assured her with a cool smile.

As Nao glared at her, Negi continued. "Okay, it's a relatively simple procedure. Just step forward and present your token, and you'll be inside almost immediately."

To demonstrate, Nekane herself followed the steps Negi had just described, walking forward while carrying Nigel in her arms and holding out the shilling in her fingers. She vanished - making Nao jump - and then a tiny image of her appeared in front of the miniature building set up in front of the bottle.

"Next?" Negi asked.

Makie, Akira, Ako, and Yuna went through next, followed closely by Asuna, Chibi-Asu - who insisted on holding her own shilling - Ayaka, and Chizuru. Then Misa, blowing Negi a kiss, Sakurako and Madoka. Then Satomi, with her boxes of lab equipment and preserved samples to perform the experiments that Midori had asked of her, and frowning Asakura and Sayo. Then the HiME contingent, and Fei, looking almost as nervous as Nao did, despite her much greater familiarity with such magic. He'd have to ask her what the problem was, later.

"All right," said Negi. "I'll be heading in myself."

"I still think that's a bad idea," Chisame said as she looked at the bottle. "All that stuff about growth sprurts from last time still -"

"If it happens, then I'll use youthening pills to disguise the effects," Negi interjected. "I've been slacking off on my training, and now -" He broke off, refusing to say what he might have been about to say. "Now I know that I need to do better. I have to do _better_."

"... it's a good attitude, wherever it comes from," Evangeline agreed, holding up her own shilling as she stood with Chachamaru. "Let's go, then."

He nodded, gave another charitably-termed 'smile' to those of his friends who weren't coming in this time, and took their hands before disappearing into the bottle.

"I'm sort of surprised that you're not going in," Chisame said to Nodoka, after a moment.

"Back at you," Nodoka said. "But if you're not, then I'm going to play fair."

Chisame, who had decided to spend 'real' time with her son, decided to just accept that. She looked at Arika, who was standing in front of the bottle with an odd look on her face. "You waiting for an invitation or something?" she asked the fallen queen.

"No," Arika said, patiently. "I am waiting for the portal to open. It does not seem to be doing so, does it?"

"I guess there must be a problem with your shilling," said Yue. "Nekane made so many of them, one was bound to malfunction."

"Indeed," said Arika, considering her shilling with a piercing stare. "What an unfortunate ... accident," she murmured.

* * *

Zazie had mixed feelings about her older sister. There was nothing terribly novel about that; her feelings about most topics generally balanced between two opposite emotions. For her older sister, she balanced a great deal of respect with an equal amount of distrust. However, her feelings for her sister were somewhat unique among her emotions in that she had a considerable amount of lust for her without any contradictory disgust at all.

Of course, being a mazoku, she had yet to encounter phenomena that invoked feelings of genuine disgust in her.  
In any event, when Satsuki stood up and answered the door, and Zazie heard the voice almost exactly like her own saying, "Good evening, Yotsuba-san poyo," she knew that her wish for a peaceful evening were not to be.

Again, she dropped to the floor, and stood beside Satsuki, who was staring at her double in perplexity. "Good evening, oneesama," she said, using the Japanese term for Satsuki's benefit. There was an equivalent term in their native language, but the subtleties would be lost. Just as 'oneesama' implied certain things beyond mere sisterhood, so too did their word mean more than its literal translation of 'dearest most wonderful and adored big sister of mine, wai.'

"Zazie," Poyo said, turning to look at her younger sister with an expression that Zazie was startled to realize was indicating genuine distress. "_You've got a problem,_" she added in Mazoku. A glance at Satsuki, and she added, still in that same language. "_**Both** of you._"

TO BE CONTINUED.


End file.
